After Defeat

Not being of the West; being behind the West; not being modern enough;
not being developed or industrialized, secular, civilized, Christian, trans-
parent, or democratic – these descriptions have all served to stigmatize
certain states through history. Drawing on constructivism as well as
the insights of social theorists and philosophers, After Defeat demon-
strates that stigmatization in international relations can lead to a sense
of national shame, as well as auto-Orientalism and inferior status. Ayşe
Zarakol argues that stigmatized states become extra-sensitive to con-
cerns about status, and shape their foreign policy accordingly. The theor-
etical argument is supported by a detailed historical overview of central
examples of the established/outsider dichotomy throughout the evolution
of the modern states system, and in-depth studies of Turkey after the
First World War, Japan after the Second World War, and Russia after
the Cold War.

ay Ş e z a r a kol is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Washington

& Lee University. She teaches courses on global politics, international
security, and political theory and her research focuses on the social evo-
lution of the international system and the integration of regions outside
of the West into the modern international order.
 Cambridge Studies in International Relations: 118

After Defeat

EDI TORS

Christian Reus-Smit
Nicholas J. Wheeler

E D I T O R I A L B OA R D

James Der Derian, Martha Finnemore, Lene Hansen, Robert Keohane,

Rachel Kerr, Colin McInnes, Jan Aart Scholte, Peter Vale,
Kees Van Der Pijl, Jutta Weldes, Jennifer Welsh, William Wohlforth
Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of Cambridge
University Press and the British International Studies Association (BISA). The
series will include a wide range of material, from undergraduate textbooks and
surveys to research-based monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the
series is to publish the best new scholarship in International Studies from Europe,
North America, and the rest of the world.
 Cambridge Studies in International Relations

117 Andrew Phillips

War, religion and empire
The transformation of international orders
116 Joshua Busby
Moral movements and foreign policy
115 Séverine Autesserre
The trouble with the Congo
Local violence and the failure of international peacebuilding
114 Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore and Susan K. Sell
Who governs the globe?
113 Vincent Pouliot
International security in practice
The politics of NATO–Russia diplomacy
112 Columba Peoples
Justifying ballistic missile defence
Technology, security and culture
111 Paul Sharp
Diplomatic theory of international relations
110 John A. Vasquez
The war puzzle revisited
109 Rodney Bruce Hall
Central banking as global governance
Constructing fi nancial credibility
108 Milja Kurki
Causation in international relations
Reclaiming causal analysis
107 Richard M. Price
Moral limit and possibility in world politics
106 Emma Haddad
The refugee in international society
Between sovereigns

Series list continues after index

After Defeat
How the East Learned to Live
with the West

Ay ş e Z a r a kol
c a m br idge u n i v e rsi t y pr ess
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,
São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Ayşe Zarakol 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Zarakol, Ayşe.
After defeat : how the East learned to live with the West / Ayşe Zarakol.
p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in international relations ; 118)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-19182-1 (hardback)
1. International relations–Social aspects. 2. Inferiority complex–
Social aspects. 3. Defeat (Psychology) 4. Collective memory.
5. Military history, Modern–20th century. 6. Turkey–Foreign relations–
1918–1960. 7. Japan–Foreign relations–1945–1989. 8. Russia
(Federation)–Foreign relations. I. Title. II. Series.
JZ1251.Z37 2010
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2010037098

ISBN 978-0-521-19182-1 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-14556-5 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in
this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
For Michael Barnett and David Leheny
You see, our whole life, from earliest childhood, has been geared to the
European mentality. Is it possible that any of us could have prevailed
against this influence, this appeal, this pressure? How is it that we have
not been regenerated once and for all into Europeans? That we have
not been so regenerated I think all will agree, some with joy, others, of
course, with anger that we have not grown up enough for regeneration.
But that is another matter. I am speaking only of the fact that we have not
been regenerated even in the presence of such irresistible influences, and
I cannot understand this fact.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
From Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)
Contents

Acknowledgments page x
Introduction 1

Part I Of gates and keepers in the international system

1 Outsiders and insiders in the international system 29
2 States as outsiders 57

Part II An imperial message

3 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938) 111
4 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974) 160
5 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007) 201
6 Conclusion: Zealots or Herodians? 240
Bibliography 256
Index 286

ix
Acknowledgments

This book is about the insecurities created by the manner of

incorporation of non-Western actors into the international system
and how those insecurities continue to shape fundamental dynamics
in world politics. In order to do that argument justice, I have at times
traveled out of the more familiar confi nes of International Relations
into social and political theory, comparative history, political soci-
ology, and area studies. I read most of this literature without much
guidance, and I sincerely hope specialists in each will forgive me for
both omissions and unusual interpretations. While I am certain that
in my attempt to paint a broad picture I have overlooked important
details, this should not be construed in any way as intentional disres-
pect. I can only hope that the book’s comprehensive vision compen-
sates to some extent for its shortcomings.
This project has descended from a dissertation completed at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, but has become something much
larger and bolder since then. Most of the current draft was written at
Washington & Lee University, and supported by the generous Glenn
and Lenfest summer research grants. Among many great colleagues,
Robin LeBlanc and Mark Rush have been especially kind and encour-
aging during my time at this institution. I am also grateful to the
Department of Politics, as well as the Williams School, for all the
support I have received for my research agenda.
Back at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I encountered great
role models who always encouraged me to follow what interests me
rather than what is in vogue. There is something in this book from
almost each class I took in Madison. I would like to thank my profes-
sors Michael Barnett, David Leheny, Jason Wittenberg, Jon Pevehouse,
Mark Beissinger, Edward Friedman, Bernard Yack, Marion Smiley, Paul
Hutchcroft, and Aseema Sinha for their wisdom and support. I should
also mention here my undergraduate professors from Middlebury
College, most notably Murray Dry, Jeff Cason and Michael Kraus,

x
Acknowledgments xi

without whose example I probably would not have become a political

scientist. I am also thankful to my classics professors from Middlebury
College, especially Jane Chaplin and Eve Adler, for making me realize
by their brilliance that a little levity does not hurt at all when talking
about history. Part of the research for this book was undertaken when
I was a research fellow at Istanbul Bilgi University, and I am especially
grateful to İlter Turan for giving me that opportunity.
Over the course of writing, several people have given me tips or
feedback which improved the book. I would like to thank Georgi
Derluguian, Shogo Suzuki, Brent Steele, Iaonnis Stivachtis, Patrick
Thaddeus Jackson, Richard Beardsworth, and Roger Haydon, as well
as other individuals who have asked questions at panels and talks
where I have presented parts of this work. Parts of this book origin-
ally appeared in the article “Ontological (In)security and State Denial
of Historical Crimes: Turkey and Japan,” International Relations,
Volume 24, Issue 1 (2010). The original article can be found at http://
ire.sagepub.com. I would be remiss if I did not thank the editor of
that journal, Ken Booth, as well as the two anonymous reviewers,
for their many suggestions about that article, which I have also taken
into account here. I am also incredibly grateful to the two anonymous
readers from Cambridge University Press for their excellent directions
about how to improve this book. In addition, I would like to thank
my editors, John Haslam and Carrie Parkinson, for overseeing this
project into print. I am especially thankful to John Haslam for taking
a chance on me by sending the manuscript out to review.
During the course of writing this book, I have also benefited from a
wonderful support network of friends and family. Among many great
friends, I am especially thankful to Simanti Lahiri, Jelena Subotic,
Patrick Cottrell, Travis Nelson, Demet Lüküslü, Burç Beşgül, Özge
Onursal, and Zeynep Gülşah Çapan for their comments on various
drafts, for many days and nights of stimulating “nerdy” conversation,
as well as for their genuine friendship. I should also mention here
friends who kept me grounded by reminding me that there is a world
outside of academia. I would like to thank Aylin Ülçer, Arzu Soysal,
Ayşin Hattat Vardar, Banu Kutlu, Hürol Ayaz, İrem Çavuşoğlu,
Irazca Geray, Liz Amado, Petek Salman, Selin Arat, Sibel Demir, and
my brother, Aras Zarakol. I am also grateful to my in-laws Margaret
and James Jajich for their patience with me at times when this book
project took precedence over family matters. My parents, Necla and
xii Acknowledgments

Cihan Zarakol, are, and have always been, the best part about being
me, and they continue to inspire me in every way imaginable. Finally,
no one has put up with more in service of this project than my won-
derful, kind, generous, brilliant husband, Dmitri Jajich, who also
took the photograph on the cover image of this book.
I dedicate this book to my mentors, Michael Barnett and David
Leheny. I know I would never have fi nished this book without their
unwavering encouragement. All failings in what follows are mine
alone, but the credit for what is worthwhile belongs rightly to Michael
and Dave.
 Introduction

… And from the other side, it is also the case that the most earnest and
heartfelt efforts to imitate some foreign model can never entirely succeed
in eliminating tell-tale traces of older, traditional local patterns of human
interaction. The modern history of Japan, Russia and Turkey should suf-
fice to tell us that.
William McNeill, “A Defence of World History”

In 2006, while I was working on an earlier draft of this book, Turkish

novelist Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What
should have been a joyous occasion for the writer and for Turkey, how-
ever, was instead marked by histrionic public accusations of treachery
against Pamuk. He was vilified in the Turkish press. Several months
before the announcement of the award, Pamuk had been interviewed
by a Swiss newspaper, and in response to the reporter’s characteriza-
tion of Turkey as a country having difficulty in facing its past, he had
emphasized his own willingness to discuss the Armenian genocide
and the plight of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Even though Pamuk’s
transparency had been partly motivated by a desire to defend Turkey
(against the implied charge that Turkey cannot deal with its problems
like an “adult” and therefore does not deserve to join the European
Union), when this interview was later covered in the Turkish media,
many Turks decided that Pamuk was either a traitor or, at best, a
sleaze. Official charges were brought against him for denigrating
“Turkishness” (the charges were later dropped). Some even argued
that if Pamuk were an honorable man, he would return his prize,
which was surely given to him for political reasons. It was suggested
that by accepting the Nobel Prize he was playing into the hands of the
Westerners, whose sole motivation in their dealings with Turks was
to make Turkey look bad.
I suppose everything about this episode looks ridiculous to an out-
sider. Here is a country that has bent itself out of shape for almost a

1
2 Introduction

century to join the Western world, while at the same time holding on
to the worst kind of paranoid suspicions about Western intentions.
Turks accuse Westerners of portraying Turks always in an unflatter-
ing light (and rewarding those native sons, such as Pamuk, for playing
along); yet their way of dealing with this perceived injury is to act in
the most petulant way imaginable, giving credence to those who like
to portray Turks as brutish. Even to sympathetic observers, Turks’
general tendency to fly off the handle when confronted by any ugly
facet of their country, their strange laws protecting “Turkishness,”
and their inability to break out of groupthink when it comes to narra-
tives of Turkish history seems like nationalism run amok. And there
is some truth to that assessment.
I hope I do not come across as an apologist, however, if I suggest that
the exaggerated sense of pride and the persecution complex exhibited
by Turkish nationalism today is not an inherent tendency of “Turks,”
but rather the unfortunate consequence of Turkey’s place in the inter-
national system. This is not to say that Turks are justified in acting
in this manner or cannot help but act in this manner. Nonetheless,
however responsible Turks may be for their conduct, the underlying
causes of such behavior can be found only in the interactions between
Turkey and international society throughout the last century.
Orhan Pamuk is a writer who personifies Turkey’s greatest aspir-
ations and anxieties. He was able to achieve a level of international
recognition that most Turks believed would never be accorded to a
Turkish citizen; but he did this by writing (and speaking) evocatively
about things that Turks fi nd embarrassing while simultaneously ridi-
culing things that Turks lionize. Many Turks believe that Pamuk was
rewarded for confi rming the West’s worst perceptions of Turkey, from
the Armenian genocide to the fact that some Turkish women wear
headscarves.1 And they are partly right.
The nationalists are obviously wrong about Pamuk being a traitor,
but in all of the misdirected anger at him, there lies the justifiable (or
at least understandable) frustration with the fact that Pamuk gets rec-
ognition because he often writes about what is different about Turkey.

1
This is one of the subject matters of Pamuk’s Snow. “‘Isn’t it bad for us if
American readers fi nd out from this book that some Turkish women wear
headscarves?’ asked a worried boy, who had told me he learned his excellent
American English by chatting on the Megadeth fansite. ‘Won’t they think
we’re … like Iran?’” From Gloria Fisk, “Orhan Pamuk and the Turks.”
National identity and stigma 3

Turks (or, at least, the secular, urban, establishment Turks) want what
they cannot get: to be recognized simultaneously for what Turkey has
in common with the West (i.e. as an ordinary, “normal” country) and
for the super-human effort Turks have put into creating that common
ground (i.e. as an extraordinary, “special” country). The realization
that the West cares more about what lies beyond the Westernized
Turkey Turks have worked so hard and sacrificed so much to create is
an existential kick in the gut.

National identity and stigma

Are the nationalist Turks irrational? Perhaps. Their frustration is not
that different, however, than that of a blind person who has spent a
lifetime developing skills to function as well as a “normal”2 person,
only to fi nd time and time again that people cannot but see him as a
blind person, that whatever he does, he cannot shed the label of blind-
ness as the primary marker of his identity. Being rewarded for one’s
handicap is in some ways worse than being shunned for it – a person
is thus deprived also of the righteous indignation of the deliberately
victimized and has difficulty justifying his anger.
In their reactions to Pamuk’s award as well as in their other seem-
ingly irrational behavior, Turks, as a group, are acting very much like
an individual who carries a “stigma” and who is trying to hide it.
Erving Goffman describes “stigma” as “a special discrepancy between
virtual and actual social identity.”3 If the stigmatized individual
assumes that “his differentness is known about already” he is someone
who is “discredited”; if he assumes that his stigma “is neither known
… nor immediately perceivable” he is someone who is “discreditable.”
Modern Turks continuously live with the fear of becoming discredited;
they worry about being forever stuck with their “stigma(s)”: Eastern,
backward, Asian, Muslim, uncivilized, barbaric, etc.
One of the distinctive features of having to endure life with a stigma
is feeling the need to be always “on,” “having to be self-conscious and
calculating about the impression [one] is making, to a degree and in
areas of conduct which [one] assumes others are not.”4 In stigmatized

2
“We and those who do not depart negatively from the particular expectations
at issue I shall call the normals.” Goffman, Stigma, p. 5.
3
Ibid., p. 3. 4 Ibid., p. 14.
4 Introduction

collectives, the same need to be “on” seems to manifest as the emer-

gence of an officially sanctioned group self-narrative that is quite stif-
ling of individual members’ ability to express themselves honestly to
the outside world. Actions such as Pamuk’s are perceived as a betrayal
of the highest order, and in some ways they are: by undermining the
sanctity of the group narrative, they spoil the identity of the group
and therefore threaten its very existence.
One of the underlying arguments in this book is that stigma has
the same effect on states that it has on individuals: it colors and
therefore motivates every subsequent interaction. Not being of the
“West,” being behind the “West,” not being “modern” enough, not
being developed or industrialized or secular or civilized or Christian
or democratic enough – these are examples of designations (and,
later, self-evaluations) that have essentially functioned as stigmas
for states. To treat such labels as if they were only objective assess-
ments of the facts on the ground is to miss entirely the social dynam-
ics of international relations. By drawing attention to the stigma-like
properties of seemingly objective assessments in international rela-
tions, I want to draw attention to the socially constructed nature of
the international system – it is only in a social, comparative, rela-
tive setting that various physical conditions become problems to be
managed or overcome. After all, it is the norm of sightedness that
makes blindness a stigma, something much more than an individual
attribute.
Stigma is not at all the same thing as discrimination, although there
is considerable overlap between the two in practice. Goffman said
that in order to understand stigma we need “a language of relation-
ships, not attributes.”5 Stigma, in essence, is a socially shared ground
between the “normals” and those who are being discredited: “The
stigmatized individual tends to hold the same beliefs about identity
that we do” and “the standards he has incorporated from the wider
society equip him to be intimately alive to what others see as his fail-
ing, inevitably causing him, if only for moments, to agree that he does
indeed fall short of what he ought to be.”6 Stigma, then, is as much
the internalization of a particular normative standard that defines
one’s own attributes as discreditable, as it is a label of difference
imposed from outside.

5 6
Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 7.
National identity and stigma 5

Apart from a few states which have chosen total isolation (and
even those may not be completely free), most in the world today still
evaluate themselves according to the ideals and ideas of modernity.7
Many people all around the globe continue to equate modernization
with progress, development with improvement, and they hardly ever
question that these are the rightful missions of a state. Even if their
own particular state does not embody those ideals, most feel that it
should, and feel disappointed, and perhaps even humiliated, when it
falls short.
This is why Orhan Pamuk’s books, which deal with the existential
issues of being trapped between the East and the West, resonate with
readers in the “East” as much as they fascinate Westerners. In an
interview with The Believer magazine, Pamuk remarks:

I’ll tell you something. I have just come back from Japan, China, Hong
Kong, Taipei. And you know what they say? This is very peculiar … No
one thinks his country is completely East. In China, they say, “Yes, Mr.
Pamuk, we have the same East/West question here.” They think that they
are also torn between the East and the West, the way we are here in Turkey.
They don’t consider themselves in China or in Tokyo completely “East.”
They think that they have some part of the “West” and “East,” you see?
… And they will tell you this, and then they will smile – knowing the
strangeness of it. There is no place, perhaps, in humanity, where the subject
considers himself completely Eastern.8

What sets Turkey apart from the West, much to the consternation
of secular Turks who want to pass as ordinary Europeans, unites it
in a common fate with the majority of states in the modern inter-
national system. Most communities in the world exist in a constant
state of identity struggle. While it is extremely difficult to live up to
the standards of modernity – which, despite its universal language,
has undeniable Western origins and therefore carries certain assump-
tions about proper social and institutional configurations – without
feeling inauthentic, it is also almost impossible to be authentically
non-Western.

7
See Meyer and Jepperson, “‘Actors’ of Modern Society,” 105, for a further
elaboration of this point.
8
Rockingham, “Interview with Orhan Pamuk.”
6 Introduction

Modernity and the international system

The lack of attention given to the particular cultural and historical
origins9 of the modern international system may just be the most glar-
ing oversight in mainstream International Relations (IR). The emo-
tional price that the majority of peoples around the world have had to
pay as a result of joining a system of states with very specific cultural
origins – the rules of which they did not create, the norms of which
were unfamiliar at best, the major players of which judged and expli-
citly labeled them as inferior, and the ontology of which convinced
them that they indeed were lacking in some way – is swept under the
rug as being irrelevant to international affairs.
People who have grown up in countries whose modernity has never
been in question may not fully understand how all-consuming10 the
stigma of comparative backwardness may become for a society; how
tiring it is to conduct all affairs under the gaze of an imaginary and
imagined West, which is simultaneously idealized and suspected of
the worst kind of designs; or how scary it is to live continuously on
the brink of being swallowed by a gaping chasm of “Easternness,”
which is simultaneously denigrated and touted as the more authentic,
the more realistic choice. No amount of hostile bravado disguised as
nationalist rhetoric of pride can cover up the fear people around the
world feel when they think about their place in the international sys-
tem. Let me turn to Pamuk once again:

What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity’s
basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for noth-
ing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the col-
lective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and
imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their
next of kin … We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations out-
side the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing

9
See Salter, Barbarians and Civilization, pp. 114–20, as well as Blaney and
Inayatullah, Problem of Difference, Introduction, for an extended discussion
of this critique.
10
“The awareness of inferiority means that one is unable to keep out of
consciousness the formulation of some chronic feeling of the worst sort
of insecurity, and this means that one suffers anxiety and perhaps even
something worse, if jealousy is really worse than anxiety.” Sullivan, as
quoted by Goffman, Stigma, p. 13.
Modernity and the international system 7

to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their
fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a
world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples
taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time,
succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.11

To be torn between the East and the West as a state, as a society, as

a nation, is to exist in the international system with the dilemmas
that are faced by stigmatized individuals in everyday interaction. The
individual with stigma may accept that he has a stigmatized attribute
and try to improve his life within the bounds of that awareness – but
that choice implies resigning oneself to second-class status. Bringing
oneself to that kind of resignation is extremely difficult, even in cases
where it may unavoidable.12 Or the individual may try to act as if he
does not have a stigma or convince himself that it may be overcome
with the right measures, but that course of action relegates one to a
lifetime of dissonance, and does not necessarily guarantee success.13
Just like individuals, some states have coped with potentially stig-
matizing labels more calmly than others. Turkey is not one of those
countries. The emotional trauma inflicted by the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire, which came toward the tail end of the century in
which Turks internalized modern standards and their own stigma-
tization, has made Turkey, at least thus far, a state that is obsessed
with international stature, recognition, and acceptance. Much like an
individual who attains a stigma attribute later in life and blames it for
everything that goes wrong after that point, modern Turkish identity
was constructed around the notion that the only thing keeping Turkey

11
Pamuk, “My Father’s Suitcase.”
12
Goffman quotes the account of a newly blind girl visiting an institution for
the blind:
Here was the safe, segregated world of the sightless – a completely different
world, I was assured by the social worker, from the one I had just left …
I was expected to join this world. To give up my profession and to earn my
living making mops. I was to spend the rest of my life making mops with
other blind people, eating with other blind people, dancing with other blind
people. I became nauseated with fear, as the picture grew in my mind. Never
had I come upon such destructive segregation. (Stigma, p. 17)
13
More on this point later, but for now, see also Bauman, Modernity and
Ambivalence, pp. 77–8, 80.
8 Introduction

from regaining its former glory was its identity as a non-Western state.
In the reconstructed nationalist narrative of the republic, the failure
to modernize, to become Western, is seen as the primary reason for
the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In other words, for Turks, the
pain of losing an empire is fused with the feeling of inferiority due to
being not Western/modern enough.

Three cases of stigmatization: Turkey, Japan, and Russia

By now, it will probably come as no surprise to the reader if I confess
that I started this project with the desire to understand the things
I found so frustrating about my native country, Turkey – but also
because I thought that there had to be something missing from a body
of literature that had almost nothing to say about political actions I
observed on an almost daily basis.
Now that I have put some emotional and physical distance between
Turkish society and myself, I am able to observe a certain peculiar
tendency in friends and family. “Only in Turkey,” they will fre-
quently say, “such a thing could only happen in Turkey!” The com-
plaints vary, but the formula remains the same: “if only we were
living under a true democracy/in a modern country/among civilized
people, then our fellow citizens would behave/dress appropriately/
talk politely/have manners/they would not be so religious/or wear
headscarves/or try to cut corners/or elect a government like AKP/and
so on.” Goffman points out that this kind of condescension is a way
of putting a distance between oneself and one’s “own”: “The stigma-
tized individual exhibits a tendency to stratify his ‘own’ to the degree
to which their stigma is apparent and obtrusive. He can then take up
in regard to those who are more evidently stigmatized than himself
the attitudes the normals take to him.”14 There is also a parallel nar-
rative about the uniqueness of Turkey. Only Turkey is supposed to be
unfairly singled out for discrimination by the West; only Turkey can
bridge the East and the West; only Turkey can be a model for Muslim
countries; nobody understands Turkey; nobody appreciates Turkey;
Turkish society is too complex for ordinary political institutions to
work there, etc.

14
Goffman, Stigma, p. 107.
Three cases of stigmatization 9

There was a time I would have agreed with them wholeheartedly –

after all, I too am shaped by the Turkish national habitus.15 Growing
up in Turkey, I was inclined to think that Tolstoy’s maxim about
unhappy families applied equally well to nations, and that Turkey was
a special bundle of contradictions and problems, the likes of which
nobody else had to deal with. Thankfully, I was wrong (misery loves
company). As much as Turks would like to believe that they face a
unique set of challenges, there are in fact other countries with similar
constellations of problems.
The domestic narratives in both Japan and Russia bear a striking
resemblance to those in Turkey. All three countries are torn between
the East and the West, and in each case this condition is sometimes
seen as a weakness that needs to be overcome (by choosing one side
over the other) and sometimes as a blessing that needs to be exploited
(by acting as either a bridge or a protective gate between the two).16
This similarity may be surprising given the differences between
these countries’ material conditions, but it is no accident. Certain
characteristics set these states apart from both the “East” and the
“West,” and it is no coincidence that William McNeill singled these
three countries out as examples of states that were unable to eliminate
“tell-tale traces” of older patterns despite their “heartfelt efforts.”
Turkey, Japan, and Russia all pre-date the Westphalian system as
political entities.17 As empires, they18 long sustained social universes
capable of producing comprehensive worldviews – in other words,
before their incorporation into the Westphalian system these states
had their own normative standards by which they defi ned them-
selves as “normal” and others as different, abnormal, or inferior.

15
Habitus is “an active residue or sediment of [the actor’s] past that functions
within his present, shaping his perception, thought, and action and thereby
molding social practice in a regular way.” Crossley, “The Phenomenological
Habitus,” 83.
16
E.g. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 177; Klien, Rethinking
Japan’s Identity, p. 6.
17
Obviously, these were not the only states around in the seventeenth century
to have missed the beginning of system formation only to join it in some form
later. Aspects of my argument apply to states such as Iran, India, China, and
Thailand as well, but what distinguishes Turkey, Japan, and Russia is the
relative autonomy they were able to retain vis-à-vis Europe.
18
For system-level arguments, the book follows the IR (and layman’s)
convention of referring to states as if they are capable of expressing
purposeful, unitary agency.
10 Introduction

Therefore, incorporation into the Westphalian system in the case

of these pre-modern empires necessitated giving up a self-affi rming
position of relative privilege and accepting a self-negating position of
an outsider instead. This new position did not square well with self-
understandings shaped by centuries of being the masters of their own
domains.19 Furthermore, because they joined the original incarnation
of the international system, the European society of states, as autono-
mous entities, their position of inferiority was not overtly forced on
them, as it was in the case of colonized peoples20 – they came to an
awareness about their inferiority, i.e. in the sense of a lack or def-
icit of modernity, through their own internal discussions. 21 As such,
people of these states did not reject outright the values of modernity
as a hostile foreign imposition (as is perhaps the case with certain
schools of Muslim thought) but, rather, looked upon those values as
something to be emulated; believed Westernization to be a goal that
a state could achieve by trying hard enough, and saw it as a solution
that might allow them to recreate their past privileged position in the
new normative universe. In the twentieth century, all three countries
experimented with revisionist grand strategies with the intent of cap-
turing what they thought was their rightful place in the new inter-
national system. However, instead of earning them a seat among the
“established” members of the international society, these revisionist
policies ended in failure.
As I will demonstrate throughout this book, the aforementioned
dynamics between the Western core of the international system and
the Eastern latecomers closely resemble the established-outsider fig-
uration delineated by the famous sociologist Norbert Elias. According

19
The importance of having a consistent self-understanding for state behavior
is stressed in the literature on “ontological security.” Ontological security
is fi rst and foremost about having a consistent sense of “self.” See Zarakol,
“Ontological Insecurity,” as well as Lebow, Cultural Theory, pp. 25–6, for
an extended overview of the relevant literature.
20
Having escaped direct colonization is a significant element of both Turkish
and Japanese identity narratives. The Japanese call this a “‘parting point in
history’ (rekishi no wakare).” Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 11.
21
This is the case even with Russia. Despite its success in joining the
Westphalian system as an equal member after Peter’s reforms, Russia
maintained an outsider status within this in-group and its differences became
more evident after the radical transformations in Western Europe at the turn
of the nineteenth century.
Three cases of stigmatization 11

to Elias, one of the remarkable aspects of the established-outsider con-

figuration is that through stigmatization “the ‘superior’ people may
make the less powerful people themselves feel that they lack virtue –
that they are inferior in human terms.”22 In the nineteenth century,
the elites in these empires came to see themselves and their countries
through European eyes, even if they did not necessarily agree on any
specific course of action vis-à-vis Europe.
Not only did the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I,
Japan in World War II, and the Soviet Union in the Cold War cost
the titular nations their empires, it also reinforced the very stigmas
these states were trying to escape. It is no accident that the interna-
tional community holds the crimes23 committed by these empires in
their pursuit for glory to be especially heinous.24 This is a reaction
very much similar to what Goffman observed in attitudes against the
stigmatized: “Further, we may perceive his defensiveness to his situa-
tion as a direct expression of his defect, and then see both defect and
response as just retribution for something he or his parents or his tribe
did, and hence a justification of the way we treat him.”25 This is not
to say that the actions of the Ottoman Empire, or Japan, or the Soviet
Union were not beyond the pale, but rather to point out the fact that in
the case of stigmatized – i.e. “backward,” “barbaric,” “uncivilized,”
“authoritarian,” “childlike,” “warlike” – Eastern states, violence is

22
Elias, “A Theoretical Essay,” p. xvi.
23
E.g. the Armenian genocide, Japanese war crimes, Stalin’s actions.
24
Germany seems an exception here, but it is not. However, due to its more
secure place in Europe, Germany is better understood as an “in-group
deviant,” whose aberrant actions are tolerated much longer than would
be the case with an outsider and for whom every door reopens after
rehabilitation. See Goffman, Stigma, chapter 5. Here is but one example of
the differing attitudes against outsiders vs. in-group deviants:
… in February 1945, a few weeks after being posted to the Pacific after years
of covering the war in Europe, Ernic Pyle, the most admired of American
war correspondents, told his millions of readers that “in Europe we felt
that our enemies, horrible and deadly were still people. But out here I soon
gathered that the Japanese were looked upon as something, subhuman and
repulsive, the way some people feel about cockroaches or mice.” He went
on to describe the Japanese prisoners of war: “They were wrestling and
laughing and talking just like normal human beings, and yet they gave me
the creeps, and I wanted a mental bath after looking at them.” (Matsuda,
Soft Power, p. 84)
25
Goffman, Stigma, p. 6.
12 Introduction

often assumed to be the default response stemming from inherent ten-

dencies and not the aberration it is supposed to be in Europe. 26
At some point in the twentieth century, then, each of these three
countries found itself stigmatized, defeated, and stigmatized again
because of having fought to overcome a stigma position. Having bet
the farm (or the empire) in a quest to regain a privileged “normal” sta-
tus in the new normative universe of the modern states system, these
states emerged from their respective wars even further away from the
“established” core. Therefore, even though this book is concerned
with the larger questions of international stigmatization and estab-
lished-outsider dynamics since the inception of the modern states sys-
tem, the empirical inquiry is limited to post-defeat choices.

Research approach and chapter outline

After Defeat juxtaposes the post-defeat choices of Turkey (1919–39),
Japan (1945–74), and Russia (1991–2007) to demonstrate that – for
at least some states in the international system – international status,
respect, and acceptance27 are primary motivators in decision-making.
I will argue that post-defeat, each country chose a strategy designed
explicitly to minimize the social status gap accrued during their out-
sider pasts and in their unsuccessful military bids for recognition. Such
identity-oriented policies were preferred even when there were other
viable policies with potentially greater military or material yields.
Especially in the immediate aftermath of defeat, each country has
preferred policies that were meant to signal an understanding and
acceptance of international norms that stigmatized them – having
been charged with a lack of “civilization,” Turkey directed all of its
efforts to obliterating signs of “Easternness”; Japan swore off its mili-
tarist past to embrace pacifism while putting great effort into eco-
nomic “development”; “enigmatic” Russia set upon a course (albeit
temporarily) of transparency and openness to foreign advice. These
states dealt with their status deficit by choosing policies intended to

26
Which, of course, is met with defensive posturing from the guilty parties,
and seen as further evidence of violent tendencies. For a more extended
discussion of Turkish and Japanese attitudes to war crimes, see Zarakol,
“Ontological Insecurity.”
27
For an overview of how these concepts have been (mis)handled in the IR
literature, see Lebow, Cultural Theory, pp. 21–4.
Research approach and chapter outline 13

yield social capital, given the norms of international society at the

time of their defeat: a secular European model of modernization and
nation-building in the case of Turkey, economic development within
American parameters in the case of Japan, and a “triple-transition” in
the case of the former Soviet Union.
The book is divided into six chapters. The fi rst chapter starts with a
discussion of the evolution of the modern international system begin-
ning with its seventeenth-century origins. The dating of the origins of
the modern international system to the seventeenth century follows
John G. Ruggie in that territorial sovereignty is taken to be the main
demarcating principle separating the modern system from previous
systems. 28 However, the focus of this chapter is mostly on the nine-
teenth century, developments during which were extremely critical in
shaping countries like Turkey, Japan, and Russia both because nation-
alist projects (and therefore state identities) have their origins in this
period, and because it was the time29 when the modernist ontology
underlying international stigmatization crystallized. Chapter 1 will
demonstrate that in the nineteenth century the relationship between
the European society of states and non-European states came to resem-
ble the established-outsider figuration outlined by Norbert Elias.
The second chapter analyzes the international system as such an
established-outsider figuration and utilizes Goffman’s aforemen-
tioned stigma theory to enumerate the possible forms of interaction
responses available to stigmatized outsider states. The two most real-
istic choices are either to attempt normalcy (either by “passing” or
fi xing one’s discrediting characteristics) or to embrace one’s stigma
(but that still leaves the choice between attempting to use it to one’s
advantage in normal society and withdrawing to one’s stigma group).
That choice will ultimately depend on both the structure of the inter-
national society and domestic considerations. The chapter outlines
which configurations of these factors are likely to lead to choosing the
existence of a discreditable state over a discredited one. Underlying
this discussion is not only an assumption that states care about their
identity (or their “ontological security”), but an argument that such
concerns shape international dynamics to a much greater extent than
is usually allowed. The second chapter also provides an overview

28
E.g. Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 148–51.
29
See also Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, p. 122.
14 Introduction

of the evolution of normative standards in the international system,

starting with the nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization up to
the present-day discourses about stability and danger.
By wedding Elias’s discussion of the established-outsider figuration
in social relations with Goffman’s explanations of stigma, the the-
oretical model presented here offers a new way to think about state
interaction in the international system. Constructivist IR theories
strongly emphasize “social” aspects of international politics, but gen-
erally ignore manifestations of social stratification within the inter-
national system. The constructivist research agenda on norms30 in the
international system has produced many fi ne examples31 of scholar-
ship in the last decades, but very few of these works make the power
dynamics32 behind socializing relationships their explicit focus. This
is not to say that constructivists (or others who study socialization33)
deny that there is often a relationship of inequality driving the process
of socialization.34 Yet, to the extent the power disparity behind norm
internalization is studied, it is conceptualized as a relatively unprob-
lematic “incentive” driving socialization, and not as something that

30
Defi ned in this literature often “as a standard of appropriate behavior for
actors within a given identity.” Finnemore and Sikkink, “International
Norm Dynamics,” 891. Note that this defi nition does not diverge far from
Goffman’s.
31
See e.g. Klotz, “Norms Reconstituting Interests”; Klotz, “Norms and
Sanctions”; Florini, “Evolution of International Norms”; Finnemore,
National Interests; Sikkink, “Transnational Politics”; Flockhart, “Complex
Socialization”; Checkel, “Why Comply?”; Checkel, “Norms, Institutions and
National Identity.”
32
One possible exception is Johnston in “Treating International Institutions,”
493.
33
For instance, neorealists tend to view socialization as a mostly automatic
process whereby systemic constraints force the weak to emulate the
successful states. See e.g. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 118,
128. The best-known neoliberal approach to the study of socialization,
Ikenberry’s After Victory, puts most of the explanatory emphasis on the
choices of hegemonic victors. The problem with such approaches is that
the power dynamic is thought of as completely independent and a priori to
the socializing process. Incidentally, constructivist disinterest in the power
disparity in socializing relationships may stem from a desire to counter this
earlier agenda and its over-emphasis on the role of hegemons in driving
normative compliance.
34
Alderson argues that acknowledging the power dimension is one advantage
the socialization literature has over the “learning” approach of neoliberal
institutionalism. See “Making Sense,” 424.
Research approach and chapter outline 15

is possibly constituted or reproduced by the socializing process itself.

For instance, Finnemore and Sikkink argue that states may have three
possible motivations for responding to “peer pressure” to social-
ize: legitimation, conformity, and esteem.35 However, because in such
studies the focus is on what drives compliance and not what happens
to the state’s identity after internalization, the distinction between
motivation and actual outcome is obscured.36 In other words, there
is little to no consideration of how a relationship of unequals may
survive intact even if socialization is successful, much less an acknow-
ledgment that the process of socialization may itself be perpetuating
that inequality.37
This neglect of the stratifying potential of international norms and
socialization in constructivism38 is unfortunate because in domestic
society we know that normative expectations always generate exclu-
sionary figurations and status hierarchies. Even prima facie benign
social norms generate complications that affect identity. Even if a par-
ticular norm – defi ning, say, a citizen, a worker, or a sovereign state –
is couched in universal, abstract, inclusive language, stratification is
inevitable. There are pressures to conform, choices to be made, and
questions about authenticity, and these constraints are not distrib-
uted evenly throughout society. Furthermore, stratification often is
a consequence of socialization; one becomes aware of the stigmatiz-
ing potential of one’s attributes (and therefore, one’s inferiority) only
after internalizing the standards of larger society. Even if stigmatizing
attributes can be corrected, correction is not the same as never having
had that attribute: “Where such repair is possible, what often results
is not the acquisition of fully normal status, but a transformation of
self from someone with a particular blemish into someone with a
record of having corrected a particular blemish.”39 Norms are essen-
tially tools of power: they reflect the power dynamics in the system

35
Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics,” 902–4.
36
Even Johnston, who approaches the constructivist norm literature with a
relatively critical eye and offers a nuanced theory of socialization, reproduces
this pattern. See “Treating International Institutions,” 499.
37
See Bauman’s Modernity and Ambivalence in its entirety for the most astute
articulation of this point.
38
Obviously, this problem is even more prevalent in neorealism and neoliberal
institutionalism, but those approaches are more internally consistent on this
point; they do not emphasize the constitutive effects of norms.
39
Goffman, Stigma, p. 9; Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 77.
16 Introduction

and are as likely to perpetuate them as they are to ameliorate them.

The flipside of socialization is otherness. Otherness implies the pres-
ence of an established-outsider dynamic.
There are several reasons why constructivist work on socializa-
tion and norm internalization has failed to draw attention to the
stratifying after-effects of these processes. To begin with, especially
early on, constructivist work on norms centered around “‘hard’ cases
of moral transformation in which ‘good’ global norms prevail over
the ‘bad’ local beliefs and practices.”40 Because until recently much
empirical work focused on the diffusion of norms that researchers
agree with in principle, such as human rights, women’s equality, etc.,
it has been difficult to conceive of such positive “socialization” as
having adverse effects on state identity.41 Furthermore, earlier con-
structivist work on norm diffusion mechanisms focused almost
exclusively on persuasion.42 Persuasion approaches assume a level of
deliberate communication in socializing interactions that is not neces-
sarily commensurate with the historical development of the modern
states system. Additionally, such a focus leads to an emphasis on
shallower single-issue norms about which one can be demonstrably
“persuaded,” as opposed to broader shifts and deeper rifts in world-
views. Hence, it is no accident that much of this earlier persuasion/
learning literature in constructivism was rather individualist in its
methodology43 and retained the rationalist cost/benefit analysis of
previous regime scholarship44 on norms, as well as its focus on highly
institutionalized settings.
At the root of these shortcomings is the presentist bias inherent
in the studies of socialization in constructivism. It is only relatively
recently in the history of the international system that it has become
conceivable to think of all states as actors which may be persuaded
by norm entrepreneurs (or other states) to choose from a menu
of international norms. That very conceptualization is made pos-
sible by a much more structural, homogenizing (and homologizing)

40
Acharya, “How Ideas Spread,” 239.
41
E.g. Sikkink, “Transnational Politics,” 520.
42
Johnston, “Treating International Institutions,” 493.
43
Checkel, “Why Comply?” 557–8.
44
See e.g. Keohane, After Hegemony; Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy;
Martin, Coercive Cooperation.
Research approach and chapter outline 17

normative convergence.45 This convergence around the norms of

modernity46 is what made it possible to speak of norm diffusion
and social learning as if they are processes that every state actor
can partake in relatively autonomously as a rational agent; as if the
diffusion of these processes has never been anchored in geography;
as if international norms have no particular cultural content or an
overwhelming ethnocentric bias. Such assumptions are plausible to
some extent if we focus only on the present-day international sys-
tem. As I will discuss in Chapter 2 , the international normative order
has become relatively more inclusive and less culturally anchored
over the course of its history, and states are more similar than ever
before.47 Nevertheless, the present dynamics of the international
system continue to be underwritten by the status hierarchies of the
past, and socialization into the deep structures of the international
system has played a historically significant role in both establishing
and perpetuating those hierarchies. The abstract and generalized
language about norms and socialization we fi nd in much of con-
structivism obscures much of that history,48 and misleads us about
the underlying causes of present-day insecurities.49
This indifference to the stratifying effects of international norms
may be attributed to the divisions within constructivism itself. More
“sociologically” oriented constructivists, especially Wendt, 50 have
positioned constructivism as a systemic theory in direct competition

45
See for instance Meyer, “World Polity”; Meyer et al., “World Society and the
Nation-State”; Meyer et al., “Expansion of Mass Education”; Boli, “World
Polity”; see also Finnemore, “Norms, Culture, and World Politics.”
46
See especially Meyer and Jepperson, “‘Actors’ of Modern Society.”
47
In fact, one could argue that the reason why the international system
seems more inclusive today is because there has been such a great degree of
convergence around Westphalian norms.
48
Even Checkel, who urges more caution about causal processes involved in
socialization and more attention to domestic agency, is partly guilty of this.
For instance, he points out that norm diffusion is more likely when there is a
“cultural match” between the systemic norm and the historically constructed
domestic norms. See e.g. Checkel, “Norms, Institutions and National
Identity.” This is an excellent insight, but what is missing from the picture is
an acknowledgment that the likelihood of a cultural match is not distributed
randomly throughout the international system.
49
See Zarakol, “Ontological Insecurity.”
50
In fact, Lebow considers Wendt to be “a structural liberal” rather than a
constructivist. Cultural Theory, p. 3, fn7.
18 Introduction

with neorealism.51 This was arguably a necessary and ultimately suc-

cessful epistemological strategy, but the trade-off (at least thus far)
has been the neglect of processes at a slightly lower level of abstrac-
tion that may not apply to all states equally, as well as the particularly
uneven history of the expansion of the international system. Wendt’s
discussion of the self–other dynamic in Social Theory, 52 for instance,
is rather ahistorical;53 similarly, Wendt’s discussion of recognition in
“Why a World State is Inevitable” assumes a degree of uniformity in
the distribution of various processes throughout the social system.
Constructivists who tend toward what may be called the “psychologi-
cal” side of the literature, i.e. those scholars who are more sensitive to
domestic processes and identity narratives that are generated endog-
enously, have been traditionally more open to incorporating histori-
cal accounts and geographical differences into causal explanations
(and as a result, stand closer to new generations of English School
scholarship).54 However, this vein of scholarship generally is less con-
cerned with macro-theorizing.55
The theoretical model advanced in this book links these two flanks
of constructivism in a novel way. While the theoretical chapters of
this book build upon previous constructivist contributions on norms
and socialization, my main goal is to advance a more nuanced under-
standing of the unevenly experienced social constraints driving the
socialization of states. As noted earlier, I do this first and foremost
by borrowing from Elias and Goffman the sociological insights about
established-outsider dynamics and stigmatization. The emergence of
the established-outsider figuration is a system-level dynamic, but it
is one which creates different levels of pressures on states depending
on the particular social space they are occupying at a given time in
history. Stigmatization is also a social process, the presence of which
needs to be fi rst explained from a systemic angle, but responses to
stigmatization can only be understood by paying serious attention to
endogenous dynamics within societies.
51
See e.g. Smith, “Wendt’s World.”
52
Wendt, Social Theory.
53
See Buzan and Little, “Why International Relations Has Failed.”
54
See e.g. Neumann, Uses of the Other.
55
Lebow’s recent A Cultural Theory of International Relations is an exception
to this generalization. However, as excellent as that book is, it does not
address the gap I am discussing here: i.e. the uneven distribution of systemic
social constraints.
Research approach and chapter outline 19

The application of these sociological frameworks to the international

system advances several other literatures as well. The demonstration
of the presence of the established-outsider figurations throughout
the evolution of the international system builds upon the more his-
torically oriented scholarship in IR and sociology such as the English
School, 56 the historical institutionalist variants of constructivism, 57
the World Polity school, 58 but also the more materialist approaches
such as World-System theory and macro-realism. 59 Each of these
approaches has made invaluable contributions to our understand-
ing of the evolution of the Westphalian state model and the modern
states system. However, the account offered in Chapters 1 and 2 con-
cerning the evolution of the modern states system is not an uncritical
summary of the aforementioned literatures. What is critically absent
from most of these approaches is a theory of society at the interna-
tional level60 and an interest in agency in the face of socialization
pressures.
While I do not claim to advance a proper theory of international
society, there is an implicit argument about society underlying the
discussions of stigmatization in this book. Contrary to what most of
the IR literature would lead us to believe, emulation does not neces-
sarily guarantee that the socialized actor comes automatically to
resemble the “normals.” Socialization driven by a desire to escape
stigmatization can actually perpetuate the established-outsider figur-
ation. However, the presence of the desire to emulate is itself telling
because it means that the actor has internalized the judgment of the
larger society. In other words, stigmatization points to the presence
of shared norms, and as I will argue in Chapter 2 , this is a more
realistic litmus test for deducing the presence of an “international

56
Especially the more recent generation of scholarship such as Keene, Beyond
Anarchical Society; Suzuki, Civilization and Empire; Hobson and Sharman,
“Enduring Place.”
57
What I have in mind here is works such as Reus-Smit’s Moral Purpose,
or Bukovansky, “Altered State”; Blaney and Inayatullah, “Westphalian
Deferral”; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond.” Obviously, this variant
of constructivism is intimately linked with the new generation of English
Scholarship mentioned in the previous footnote and vice versa.
58
See footnotes 40 and 43.
59
Wallerstein, Chase-Dunn, Derluguian, Tilly, Collins, etc.
60
Lebow, Cultural Theory, pp. 2–4.
20 Introduction

society” than the sense of “we-ness,” common purpose,61 or the legal-

istic approaches62 used in the IR literature.
Realist arguments rejecting the existence of an international soci-
ety of states (or deem an international society at best a negligible
presence compared with thicker versions of society) have one thing
in common with the English School approaches: too high a standard
of what constitutes “society.” There are plenty of domestic societies
where common purpose or a sense of explicit “we-ness” is at best
a remote ideal or simply empty rhetoric, and it is actually the pres-
ence of stratification that points to a shared normative ground. The
Brahmin, for instance, does not feel he has anything in common with
the Untouchable; the White Supremacist is antagonistic toward racial
minorities; many Saudi men believe the testimony of four women
equals that of one man. In fact, as Lebow points out, “given the
inequalities of all social orders, and the exclusions, restrictions and
compulsions they entail, it is nothing short of remarkable that most
people in most societies adhere to stipulated practices and rules.”63
While the people in the examples above presumably live under a com-
mon state, that is not the only thing that binds them together in a
society: in all of the examples, the oppressor and the oppressed, the
powerful and the powerless, the insider and the outsider share a com-
mon framework, a common habitus, a common ontology (such as

61
E.g. “A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of
states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a
society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common
set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working
of common institutions.” Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 13. Also see Wight,
“Western Values”; Bull and Watson, Expansion of International Society,
p. 1. Buzan, “From International System,” provides a review of how
“society” has been conceptualized in the English School.
62
As Suzuki notes, the legal positivist perspective adopted by English School
scholars “resulted in a belief that when European and non-European states
entered into treaty relations based on normative concepts originating
from European international society, this implied an almost automatic
and reciprocal commitment to the Society’s institutions and practices.”
Civilization and Empire, p. 16. Earlier generations of the English School
suffered from the same blind spot as to the perverse effects of socialization
that the constructivist scholarship on norms is permeated with; scholars such
as Bull and Watson treated the expansion of European international society
as an overwhelmingly positive development. See O’Hagan, Conceptualizing
the West, p. 129; Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, p. 15.
63
Lebow, Cultural Theory, p. 4.
Research approach and chapter outline 21

faith or ethnicity) of the world, and recognize each other as part of

that framework.64 The international system is not that different: states
rely on recognition65 from other states for their sovereign existence,
which implies that there is a shared understanding about what a mod-
ern “state” is. There are criteria for recognition as a state: territory, a
constituency, a recognizable administrative structure, etc.66 There is
a great deal of homology between domestic structures. Finally, that
there is a “society” at the international level becomes obvious when
we consider the implicit common ground shared by the states in the
modern international system,67 which is even more remarkable given
the absence of a world government. As Chapter 2 will demonstrate,
the Standard of Civilization, the distinctions between modernity and
barbarism, the obsession with development, etc., are all examples of
shared normative ground between the established and the outsiders
of the international system.
Chapter 2 will also address the link between modernity and the
projection of the established-outsider dynamic to the international
level. Drawing especially upon Hegel and Nietzsche, I will argue that
it is no accident that the established-outsider figuration truly mani-
fested on an international scale for the fi rst time in the nineteenth cen-
tury. While there are good reasons to argue that making distinctions
between “us” and “others” is a feature of the human condition,68
there is no reason to suppose that “us” and “others” will always agree

64
This is also in line with Lebow’s argument that societies are bound together
by one of four reasons: “fear, interest, honor and habit.” Ibid.
65
E.g. Wight, Systems of States, p. 153; Clark, “Legitimacy in a Global
Order,” 84–5.
66
See for instance Meyer, “World Polity”; Meyer et al., “World Society and
the Nation-State”; Meyer et al., “Expansion of Mass Education”; Frank
et al., “Rationalization and Organization”; Frank et al., “Nation-State”;
Ramirez, “Global Changes”; Schofer, “Science Associations”; Thomas et al.,
Institutional Structure; see also Finnemore, “Norms, Culture, and World
Politics.”
67
Bull and Watson note in Expansion of International Society, p. 5, that
the reciprocity of sovereign recognition is a unique feature of the modern
international system. We may also recall Giddens’s observation that the
emergence of international relations is coeval with the origins of the nation
state.
68
See e.g. Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories. For a more general
overview of the literature theorizing the self–Other relationship, see also
Neumann, Uses of the Other, chapter 1; Salter, Barbarians and Civilization;
Abizadeh, “Does Collective Identity Presuppose an Other?”
22 Introduction

on how they are ranked in relation to each other.69 The distinction

between “us” and “others” may not be an obstacle to social cohesion70
if that distinction is built into the self-understanding of both parties.71
This is essentially what distinguishes the “established-outsider” figur-
ation from the more ubiquitous “us–others” dynamic. It is the former,
not the latter, that characterizes relations in the modern international
system, which “does not aim at the ‘elimination of enemies but at the
destruction of strangers, or more generally strangehood’.”72 What sets
modernity apart is not “the division into selves and others. Rather, it
is the effect of seeming to exclude the other absolutely from the self, in
a world divided into two.”73 As Bauman has argued, it is this type of
dynamic which creates pressures to assimilate, because in such situ-
ations, the burden to resolve the ambivalence created by strangeness,
being on the wrong side of the dichotomy, falls on the stranger, the
outsider.74
Finally, Chapter 2 will also explore the available options for modern
international actors who fi nd themselves on the losing end of the
established-outsider dynamic. Being stigmatized as an outsider has
serious costs, and leaves a permanent mark on the national habitus.
I noted above that treatments of socialization in constructivism tend
to focus too much on the present-day international system and sug-
gested that a more historically grounded approach may be needed
to draw attention to the uneven distribution of social constraints in
the modern states system. However, it is possible to err too much on
the opposite end of the spectrum and to seriously underestimate the
agency of stigmatized, outsider, “Eastern” actors.
While the abstract, ahistorical models of socialization one encoun-
ters in neorealism, neoliberalism, and certain variants of construc-
tivism mistakenly impute equal maneuvering room to all actors in
the international system, the historically conscious narratives of the
English School literature have traditionally downplayed almost all

69
In other words, what distinguishes the stigmatized “outsider” from the more
generic “other” is that he agrees with the “normal” society to some extent
that his devaluation is deserved.
70
See Lebow, Cultural Theory, p. 8, for a discussion of why this may pose a
threat to social cohesion.
71
See also Huysmans, “Security!” 242–3.
72
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 153.
73 74
Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 167. Ibid., p. 75.
Research approach and chapter outline 23

agency at the receiving end. The problem of incorporation is posed

from the point of view of the existing international society, in this
case the European society states. As a result, there is not enough the-
oretical conceptualization of the mechanisms driving socialization.
Buzan, for instance, relies on the Waltzian logic of anarchy generating
like units in order to explain the emergence of international society.
His only remark about agency at the other end is his remark that “his-
torical discussions of how non-European states came to terms with
what Gong has termed the European Standard of Civilization are sug-
gestive of how this process of convergence toward a shared identity
works, the most striking case being Japan’s conscious reshaping of
itself into a Western state during the nineteenth century,”75 which
hardly goes further than acknowledging that some kind of socializa-
tion occurs in a competitive system.76 The World Polity school suffers
from a similar weakness. World Polity scholars correctly reject func-
tional depictions of the modern state – as a natural, purposive, and
rational actor – inherent in realism, as well as accounts of state forma-
tion which are exclusively based in localized national cultural narra-
tives, in favor of a view of the modern bureaucratic state as a cultural
construct that is embedded and legitimated by a global culture.77 Yet
they are silent on the mechanisms of socialization,78 a choice which
inevitably downplays the agency of the emulative actors.
This book aims to underline the additional pressures faced by
Eastern actors on the one hand and bring their agency in responding
to stigmatization to the forefront on the other hand.79 In keeping with
these goals, case studies are used to emphasize the often neglected
agency of “Eastern” actors in the international system without los-
ing sight of different systemic pressures such actors face. The theo-
retical discussion of available stigma-coping strategies presented in
Chapter 2 is later matched by detailed historical reconstructions of
after-defeat choices in each case presented in the following Chapters
3 to 5. Chapter 3 focuses on the actions of Turkey between 1918 and
1938; Chapter 4 on Japan between 1945 and 1974; and Chapter 5

75
Buzan, “From International System,” 335.
76
A similar functionalism pervades the writings of Bull and Watson as well.
77
Meyer, “World Polity,” pp. 147, 158.
78
Finnemore, “Norms, Culture, and World Politics,” 339.
79
See also Suzuki, Civilization and Empire, pp. 6–15, 26–9, for similar
critiques of the English School literature.
24 Introduction

on Russia between 1990 and 2007. In each chapter, I demonstrate

that the strategy chosen was deliberately picked because of status
concerns, given the international normative standards of the time,
and over other strategies that may have been more in line with the
predictions of mainstream IR theories. These case studies advance an
empirical argument about the significance of status and self-esteem
concerns in the international system.
In terms of social scientific approach, this book is located within
the historical institutionalist paradigm that is interested in histor-
ical dynamics and the complex interaction among social processes.
This body of work is most notable for taking into account all fields
of human interaction, i.e. economic and social as well as political.
Because of this comprehensive interest, this kind of work “require[s]
a multiplicity of theoretical tools, [as well as] the painstaking ana-
lytical reconstruction of environments in historical and comparative
planes.”80 This approach is also in line with the Bhaskarian insight
that “structural analysis explains the ‘possible’ while historical ana-
lysis explains the ‘actual.’”81 The research approach undertaken here
falls under comparative-historical methodology, primarily expressed
through reconstructed historical event and strategy narratives intended
to map causal structures suggested by applications of social stratifi-
cation theories on to the international system.82 Agency is located
within the constraints imposed by the structural space, and variation
is explained by contingency of social action on time, space, and con-
text as illustrated in the narrative. Causation is inferred by comparing
narratives across cases, and grounded in a macro-historical frame-
work. The approach is neither purely inductive nor purely deductive,
but should rather be thought of as layered, moving back and forth
between various levels of abstraction, inference, and observability.
Social constraints do not lend themselves as easily to measurement

80
See Derluguian, “Terrorism,” 6.
81
Patomaki, “How to Tell Better Stories,” 126.
82
For other examples of the use of historical narrative for the analysis of
causal processes, see Abbott, Time Matters; Griffi n, “Causal Interpretation
in Historical Sociology”; Sewell, “Three Temporalities”; Stryker, “Beyond
History versus Theory”; see also Glass and Mackey, From Clocks to Chaos;
Reisch, “Chaos, History, and Narrative”; Shermer, “Exorcising Laplace’s
Demon.” For a discussion of causation in case studies, see Mahoney,
“Comparative-Historical Methodology”; see also Brady and Collier,
Rethinking Social Inquiry; Paige, “Theory in Macrosocial Inquiry.”
Research approach and chapter outline 25

as material constraints, but they can nevertheless be conceptualized

and observed in their particular manifestations. As Goldstone noted,
“the test of the worth of a work of comparative history is whether
it identifies and illuminates relationships heretofore unrecognized
or misunderstood.”83 Furthermore, as Jackson has argued, it is not
necessary (or possible) “to fi nd evidence for ‘real motives’ driving
particular individuals to make particular choices”; rather, it is more
sensible to follow Weber’s lead in focusing on “the production and
reproduction of boundaries of action,”84 i.e. on the social context out
of which policy outcomes arise.
Case studies are therefore a particularly suitable approach to study
the actual manifestation of the structural conditions. “Given the
necessity of reconstructing meaning and of studying the effects of
mechanisms in overdetermined, open systems” that social relation-
ships are governed by, explanatory and comparative small-N case
studies of empirical events are the only way we can access the under-
lying structures.85 The case-study approach benefits from empirical
research without being epistemologically empiricist. Empiricism is
problematic because it reduces social science to only what is observ-
able, “expressed more often as a vague ‘actualism,’ that is a stance
denying the existence, plausibility, or usefulness of conceiving of
underlying structures which determine … events, and instead locates
the succession of cause and effect at the level of events.”86 Critical
realism, on the other hand, allows for a layered view of the world,
wherein we can distinguish between underlying causal mechanisms
and observable phenomena: it “encompasses a theory of emergence
of ontological levels, and it sketches out the basic lineaments of a
specifically social ontology, organized around the difference between
human agents and social structures and the differences between
social and natural mechanisms – specifically, the time, space, concept,
and practice dependency of the former.”87 This is the broad approach
underlining the analyses of case studies in this book.

83
Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion, p. 60.
84
Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy, p. 22. The broader discussion on Weberian
legitimation starts on p. 16.
85
See Steinmetz, “Odious Comparisons.”
86
Collier, Critical Realism, p. 7, as quoted in Steinmetz, “Odious
Comparisons,” 375.
87
See ibid., 377; also see Bhaskar, Reclaiming Reality.
26 Introduction

The fi nal chapter extends the discussion to present-day interna-

tional dynamics, beginning with the question of why Russia seems
to have changed course more quickly than Turkey and Japan. The
answer lies both in the historical proximity of Russia to the “estab-
lished” core of the international system (at least compared to Turkey
and Japan), and also in the evolution of international normative order.
However, both Turkey and Japan have started signaling a realization
that their post-defeat strategies are no longer as viable in the inter-
national system. I conclude by returning to the two themes I have
introduced here: the impact of international stigmatization on inter-
national relations, and the place of the established-outsider figuration
in the present-day international system.
Pa rt I

Of gates and keepers in the

international system

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from
the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says
that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it
and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is
possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” … The gatekeeper gives
him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate.
There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in,
and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often
interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many
other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put,
and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him
inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for
his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the
gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking
this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything” …
Franz Kafka
From Before the Law (1925)
1 Outsiders and insiders in the
international system

These beleaguered empires traditionally harbored an elevated self-

esteem – translated in modern times into a unifying nationalism – and
possessed sizable cultural elites capable of superimposing their frustra-
tions onto the grievances of mainly peasant populations, through mecha-
nisms ranging from religious sermonizing to nationalist education and
communist propaganda …
Georgi Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer

Introduction
This chapter introduces three political entities – Turkey, Japan, and
Russia – that were not part of the original Westphalian system, despite
having existed prior to the seventeenth century. In hindsight, this was
a costly absence. Some time after the seventeenth century, rulers of
Turkey, Japan, and Russia each made a deliberate decision to join the
states system emerging from Europe, by accepting its international
standards and borrowing a number of the domestic institutions of its
major players. This initial decision to emulate “the West”1 had per-
sistent consequences, not only for the foreign policies of the states in
question, but also their domestic affairs. In the intervening centuries,
each country went through numerous reforms, restorations, revolu-
tions, reactionary backlashes, and wars, all of which were primarily
motivated by the goal of catching up, competing, and standing equal
with the core powers of the modern states system. However, even in
the best of times, neither Turkey nor Russia, and not even Japan, has
been completely able to shed its original “outsider” status and secure

1
“The West” is a term with many connotations – and how it is defi ned at a
given moment is contingent on the processes described in this book. For now,
the term should be understood as referring to what the country (or countries)
in question thought “the West” to be at the time.

29
30 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

an unambiguous seat among the rule-makers of the modern states

system.
This chapter sets up the argument that everything these states have
done since joining the international system, from periods of enmity to
periods of extreme cooperation with “the West” (and everything in
between), is best explained by the ambiguous “insider but outsider”
status shared by these three countries. At some point during their
nineteenth-century interactions with the West, having to cope with
the stigma of this insider–outsider status created great ontological
insecurity for these states: a “deep, incapacitating state of not know-
ing which dangers to confront and which to ignore, i.e. how to get by
in the world.”2 Because this ontologically insecure relationship with
the West was one of the key ingredients used to forge a “modern
sense of self,” it has remained ingrained in the identities of these
states.
It is often overlooked that these entities, which survived from the
“pre-modern”3 era but were not organic participants in the “mod-
ernization” processes taking place in Western Europe, undertook
the project of reconstructing themselves as “modern” states in the
same period as that of having to come to terms with the “rise of the
West.” The perceived social, technological, and economic lag vis-à-
vis Europe – especially emphasized during formative periods for the
construction of the modern, Westphalian, “nation”-state identity in
Russia, Turkey, and Japan – created a sustained preoccupation with
international stature, a near pathology in the self-conception of these
states not in any way healed, but perhaps even exacerbated, by the
memories of the near-brushes with great-power status. This common
ailment of Turkey, Japan, and Russia is the only thing that explains
why the similarities between the political choices of these otherwise
very different countries are so striking.

The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia

Turkey, Japan, and Russia each exhibited the same 180-degree turn
in their foreign policy behavior in the twentieth century: Turkey circa

2
Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 341.
3
Jack Goldstone argues that the term “early-modern” is misleading and
Eurocentric; see “Problem Of the ‘Early Modern’ World.”
The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia 31

1923, Japan circa 1945, and Russia circa 1991.4 Within a relatively
short time span, each country stopped fighting with the core Western
powers and began not only to cooperate, but also to remake their
institutions according to the prevailing (Western) international norms
of the time.
Mainstream IR theories dismiss these outcomes as a by-product
of competition or as the socialization of the vanquished by the vic-
tors. In the mainstream IR literature socialization is often viewed
as a rational response by states to systemic constraints or material
incentives. Neorealism, for instance, does not even consider sociali-
zation “an important policy question because it is so common and
inevitable,”5 and holds that the competitive environment created
by the anarchic nature of the international system pushes states to
become “like units” or fall by the wayside.6 Of the three cases men-
tioned above, this explanation could potentially apply to all, but has
been most frequently invoked to explain changes in Russian behavior
toward the end of the Cold War, probably because in that case there
was no battlefield defeat or military occupation.7 In analyses of the
aftermath of traditional wars, as in the cases of Turkey and Japan,
socialization of the defeated state is generally chalked up to the incen-
tives created by the victor(s). Liberals and realists may disagree on

4
While these transitions were relatively speedy, they did not happen overnight.
This is why I am giving approximate dates. A more nuanced account will be
developed in the case-study chapters.
5
Alderson, “Making Sense,” 428.
6
Waltz claims that emulation is a result of competition; those who do not
emulate the successful fall by the wayside. The effects of competition are not
confi ned to the military realm; socialization to the system also occurs because
refusal to play the game is to risk one’s own destruction, though he does
not really explain why. Theory of International Politics, pp. 74–7, 116–18,
127; Man, State and the War, p. 220. See also Thies, “Social Psychological
Approach,” for an overview of the various socialization mechanisms posited
by neorealist approaches. There are similar approaches in sociological realism
and economic geography as well, with a generally functionalist understanding
of why socialization/emulation/convergence happens. See e.g. North and
Thomas, Rise of the Western World; McNeill, Pursuit of Power. For critiques
of such approaches, see Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 156; Checkel,
“Norms, Institutions and National Identity,” 86; Wendt, Social Theory, pp.
100–2.
7
See e.g. Wohlforth, “Realism and the End”; Copeland, “Trade Expectations”;
Brooks and Wohlforth, “Power, Globalization”; Schweller and Wohlforth,
“Power Test,” etc. Waltz uses the same logic to explain the socialization of the
Bolsheviks as well.
32 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

the underlying motivations of victors8 in such interactions, but they

generally agree that socialization is a rational response by defeated
states (or elites in those states9) to various incentives. Elites are
assumed to push for domestic changes either because they have no
other choice (neorealism)10 or because such adaptation is rewarded
(liberal institutionalism,11 but also some veins of classical realism12
and constructivism13). Versions of these cost–benefit types of explana-
tions have been used to explain the cases at hand here: Japan’s trans-
formation is often attributed to the American occupation after World
War II; Turkey’s to Atatürk. What is missing in such accounts is the
international normative context that is framing the domestic debates
about the country’s direction.
In fact, even a cursory comparison of Turkey after World War I,
Japan after World War II, and Russia after the Cold War brings forth
many other puzzling facts about these transformations that main-
stream theories about socialization do not explain. Turkey made its
switch to a “Westophilean” strategy after it had achieved military
victory against the interests of the core Western countries and during
a time it was completely free of foreign occupation. Yet the domestic
reform package that accompanied this switch displayed such a com-
mitment to Western norms that even the most dyed-in-the-wool colo-
nialist could not have dreamed of implementing it. Japan made its
switch following military defeat and while it was under occupation,

8
See Fritz, “Prudence in Victory,” for a review of the literature on victor
behavior in the aftermath of defeat.
9
E.g. Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men.”
10
Alderson, “Making Sense,” 421; see also Cortell and Davis, “Understanding
the Domestic Impact,” Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and
Hegemonic Power,” 283.
11
Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” 290–2;
Ikenberry, After Victory; also in general, neoliberal regime theory explains
normative compliance as an outcome of a cost–benefit analysis. See
e.g. Keohane, After Hegemony; Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy; Martin,
Coercive Cooperation, etc. See also Johnston, “Treating International
Institutions,” 495, and Checkel, “Why Comply?” 555, for an overview.
12
See Cortell and Davis, “Understanding the Domestic Impact,” 81, and
Alderson, “Making Sense,” 428, for an overview of the classical realist
understanding of state socialization.
13
The difference between methodologically individualist constructivist
approaches and neoliberal understanding of socialization is that
constructivists emphasize the internalization of learning.
The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia 33

but not quite in the way the occupying power, the United States,
wanted. Russia made the switch not after military defeat or occupa-
tion, but completely on its own schedule, and caught even seasoned
observers off-guard.14 All of these facts point to substantial degrees of
agency exercised by these countries in choosing their strategy vis-à-vis
“the West,” and also indicate that something more complicated than
a simple cost–benefit analysis of external material stimuli was going
on in each case of strategy formulation.
There are two common features between these three cases of strat-
egy reversal in foreign policy: fi rst, each occurred soon after what was
perceived to be a major “defeat”15 of the previous institutional struc-
ture of the country and its legitimating worldview. At the time Turkey
made its switch, the Ottoman Empire had been decidedly defeated in
World War I and replaced by the Kemalist Republic. The institutions
of the Ottoman Empire reflected a worldview which was (old)-worldly,
multicultural, hands-off, “advanced organic,”16 agrarian, nonsecular,
segmentary,17 and anachronistic. The Kemalist regime that rose out
of the empire’s ashes was obsessed with modernity, staunchly secular,
ethnocentric, unitary, hands-on, bureaucratic, and emphasized indus-
trialization above all else. The meteoric rise of the Japanese Empire
in early twentieth century had come to a crushing halt at the hands
of the Americans during World War II – who made sure afterwards
that the militarist regime could never govern the country again. Japan
gave up its expansionist militarism and embraced pacifist economic
growth instead. Finally, the decade following the collapse of the Soviet
Union was marked by Russia’s desire to attract foreign investment and
implement free-market principles. In all three cases, the ideological
worldview espoused by a previous regime was entirely discredited,

14
Deudney and Ikenberry review the relevant literature in “International
Sources,” 75, fn. 2.
15
In most situations described by this word, perception precedes any
development on the ground that can be objectively measured; i.e. the
unclosed gap with the West crystallized in a formal moment perceived by all
involved parties as “defeat.”
16
Goldstone convincingly argues that this is a more apt term to describe what
are usually called “early modern” empires. Despite being sophisticated in
many other ways, these empires depended primarily on organic sources of
energy to fuel their economies: crops, animals, men, and timber. Goldstone,
“Problem of,” 261–2.
17
See e.g. Durkheim, Division of Labor; Gellner, Plough, Sword.
34 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

and brushed aside for a radically different worldview, one which was
in line with the normative demands of the international system.
Second, by the twentieth century, the three countries in question
were no longer novices at socializing to system norms or emulat-
ing the West – each had followed emulation strategies in the past in
order to improve competitiveness, to gain the acceptance of the inter-
national society of European states, and to assuage domestic concerns
about lagging behind the West. Russia is considered to have taken this
step fi rst at the end of the seventeenth century under the leadership
of Peter the Great (reign: 1682–1725), followed by his wife Catherine
I, and, later, also under the rule of Catherine the Great (1762–92).
The reform strategy had been revisited18 most ostensibly again during
the reign of Alexander II (1855–81) who, in 1861, issued the Great
Emancipation Statute freeing and elevating 20 million serfs to equal
citizen status. Despite a longer history of participating in European
affairs and even borrowing military technology, the fi rst Ottoman
Sultan to be seriously persuaded of the necessity of comprehensive
Westernization was Selim III (1789–1807), but Selim was executed
after a rebellion and serious reforms in line with European demands
were not implemented until the reign of Mahmud II (1808–39), and
continued by his son, Abdülmecid II (1839–61). In 1839, Abdülmecid
II issued the Tanzimat Declaration (prepared by his father), which
recognized the sanctity of life, liberty, and individual honor of his
subjects, and decreed that government should be formed according
to fundamental principles. As in Russia (1905), these reforms would
ultimately culminate in the convening of the fi rst parliament (1876).
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Asian continent, Japan faced
the necessity of such reforms almost as soon as it came into serious
contact with Western powers. This realization ushered in the period
known as the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912). In 1868, the Japanese
emperor Meiji issued the Charter Oath, recognizing the freedom of
each individual to pursue their own calling and urging the abandon-
ment of traditional ways. In 1889, only 13 years after the Ottoman

18
Focusing on “reform” periods is somewhat misleading because even under
“traditionalist” rulers, life was not static in any of these empires.
I nevertheless draw the distinction to emphasize periods where reforms were
deliberately chosen in order to bring the country more in line with the West.
The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia 35

Empire, Japan adopted its fi rst constitution, and in 1890, held its fi rst
national elections.
These facts contribute to a rather curious pattern. Three states,
which for one reason or another were not part of the original
Westphalian arrangement or the emergent society in Europe in the
seventeenth century, became convinced of the necessity of joining it
later on: in the case of Russia almost immediately; in the case of the
Ottoman Empire somewhat more belatedly; and in the case of Japan,
as soon as the decision became unavoidable. Realizing that taking
part in this formation as an equal member required changing the trad-
itional ways, various rulers in these countries implemented domestic
reforms, some of which were substantive and some of which were for
appearances’ sake. Domestic politics between the initial realization
and the twentieth century was marked therefore by periods of reforms
and periods of the inevitable backlashes to these reforms.
In the early twentieth century, each country was taken over by lead-
ers with revisionist agendas. In the Ottoman Empire, this happened
just before the defeat and collapse of the empire: the Committee of
Union and Progress (CUP), originally a secret society within the ranks
of the Young Turk movement, took de facto control of the empire
with a coup in 1913 (following the “Constitutional Revolution” of
1908). Between 1913 and 1918, it followed an aggressively revisionist
agenda intended to recapture the Ottoman Empire’s glory days, and,
as a proto-fascist movement, oversaw some of the most brutal actions
committed in the name of the empire, including the mass killing of the
Armenian population in 1914–15. In Japan, a similar dynamic was
repeated in the 1930s, with the military establishing complete control
over the government and pursuing an aggressively expansionist for-
eign policy in Asia, with comparably bleak results for the population
there. It needs no recounting that in the early decades of the twentieth
century, Russia, too, was taken over by a leadership that was not
enamored with the international status quo.
Obviously, there were ideological differences between these three
regimes, but these differences should not be over-emphasized. The
CUP regime in the Ottoman Empire and the militarist regime in
Japan exhibited characteristics that resemble fascism, whereas the
Bolsheviks in Russia subscribed to a version of Marxist communism.
All three movements, however, were born out of the belief that tra-
ditional approaches to foreign policy were not working and that the
36 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

lag with the West would grow larger if right measures were not taken.
Ironically, then, none of these movements, now remembered mostly
for their brutality, would have risen if the countries in question could
have been somehow shielded from ideas about progress and modernity
emanating from Europe.19 The differences do matter, of course: the
fact that the Bolsheviks had a more substantive ideology and a domes-
tic reform plan, and the fact that they took power after Russia’s near
defeat in war, and through a popular revolution, made all the differ-
ence in terms of the longevity of their regime, in comparison with the
CUP regime in the Ottoman Empire and even the military regime in
Japan. The latter two had risen to power without radically displacing
the existing political structures of their respective countries, and were
neither particularly inspired nor inspiring in terms of their proposed
domestic solutions (as is perhaps the case with all forms of revision-
ism fed from a traditionalist well).
Nevertheless, the trajectory is the same across the cases even as
its longevity varies: the Ottoman Empire’s bout of revisionism was
short and bitter, lasting less than eight years; Japan sustained it for
about twice as long; whereas the Soviet Union held out for an impres-
sive eight decades. Each of these revisionist governments was then
replaced by regimes very receptive to Western norms, ideas, and insti-
tutions. Here is the most interesting part, though: in all three cases,
there was a remarkable degree of continuity in terms of the people
involved in the said transitions. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who oversaw
Turkey’s transformation into a “civilized” state, was a direct progeny
of the Young Turk movement; and “Kemalism” is in many ways a
smooth continuation of the CUP ideology, its main point of differ-
ence being the proposed solution to the international status problem.
Shigeru Yoshida, who oversaw Japan’s transformation into a paci-
fist country that puts “economy fi rst,” had been an active participant
in the imperialist movement of the war years; in fact, he had been
imprisoned for his involvement just before becoming the prime min-
ister of postwar Japan. There is even more continuity in the Russian
case: party leaders who initiated the transition were the same people
who continued to serve after the transition. It would not be a stretch,
then, to conclude that, in all three cases, leaders who were willing to

19
For a discussion of the perverse effects of progress, see Elias et al., “Toward a
Theory,” 359.
The puzzling socialization of Turkey, Japan, and Russia 37

fight the great powers of the West one day became the emissaries of
Westernization 20 the next day.
To put it another way, none of the aforementioned explanations from
mainstream IR as to why these countries reverted (with a vengeance)
to emulating the West after revisionist “defeat” provides much mile-
age. Socialization is not explained by foreign interference or coercion
or even persuasion, since there was little in two of the three cases; it
is unexplained by leadership change, since in all three cases, the lead-
ers overseeing the transition were simply the younger members of the
old guard; and it is not even explained by survival, since the depth of
transformation went far beyond what would have been necessary to
ensure physical security (not that the physical existence of the state
was ever in serious jeopardy in any of the three cases except perhaps
Turkey). Detailed case studies in Chapters 3 to 5 will show that in the
immediate aftermath of “defeat,” leaders in each country chose what
was the most status-enhancing strategy given the international norms
of the time, despite other avenues being available to them, including
some with even greater material yield. Despite the high costs of these
status-seeking strategies, leaders were able to get popular support for
them because domestic constituencies in these countries are greatly
preoccupied by international stature, and especially with the relative
standing of their state vis-à-vis “the West.” This argument is more
in line with the predictions of ideational approaches which hold that
states are motivated by considerations of self-esteem, status, and pres-
tige, but what those approaches fail to account for is the backdrop of
modernity21 and the profound impact the diffusion of modern ontol-
ogy had on the “self-esteem” of certain states.
The aforementioned strategy of willing and deep emulation is only
explained by the fact that the countries under investigation here (along
with some others) share a unique set of experiences as stigmatized

20
For the moment, I am using this as a blanket category for actions emulating
the dominant Western norms and institutions of the time.
21
Neorealist thinking about socialization also fails to account for changes
ushered in by modernity, e.g. as manifested in the disparity between the
reaction of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of Europe versus how European
states viewed the Ottoman Empire at the peak of its power. If material
competition is a sufficient explanation for the depth of the transformation
that countries such as Turkey, Russia, and Japan underwent after modernity,
European states should have exhibited similar responses when they were
weak and the Ottoman Empire was powerful.
38 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

outsiders which caused them to be especially concerned about inter-

national stature. In other words, the insecurities created by the inter-
national environment have been built into the national identities of
these states. The status-conscious trajectories in the last century can
be traced back to that original insecurity, and in fact this was what
ultimately drove these states Westward after their respective defeats.
The evidence for these claims lies in developments in the nineteenth
century.

Modernity, ontological insecurity,

and the international system
A handful of political entities that survived from the “pre-modern”
era – entities usually lumped together under the category of pre-
modern/agrarian /gunpowder empires – experienced a different
transition to modernity than the Westphalian states that were the
locomotives of that transition.22 They had a different experience
because they had to recreate themselves as “modern” states against
a backdrop of an emerging international society of states that had
already made the transition organically. The material advance of
the early-comers was backed by a culture spouting universalizing
claims about enlightenment, progress, rationality, and self-interest.
As a result, perhaps for the fi rst time in world history, (autonomous)
emulation of competitors took on a deeper meaning – in embracing
the Western European state models, these agrarian empires were also
enveloped in a certain new worldview, one that is specific to and the
essence of modernity. By emulating the Westphalian state model and
trying to join the European society of states, people23 in these gun-
powder empires also came to accept a continuous worldview in which

22
This is not to imply that successor states to those entities that did not survive
the transition intact are exempt from this generalization; they also had
a markedly different experience with modernity than Western European
states. However, the literature concerned with the political behavior of such
cases (as a group) is considerably larger. For starters, see e.g. Ayoob, “Third
World”; Clapham, Third World Politics; Willetts, Non-Aligned Movement;
Rodríguez, Latin American Subaltern; Chaturvedi, Mapping Subaltern
Studies, as well as Blaney and Inayatullah’s Problem of Difference and
Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt.
23
Originally, this was very much an elite-driven process. More on this issue
later.
Modernity, ontological insecurity 39

there are no exceptions; a worldview with a marked emphasis on

progress, rationality, and science; a worldview which inevitably gen-
erates a universal social hierarchy predicated upon comparisons and
measurements.24 Once the peoples of the old empires started accepting
this worldview, it was inevitable that they too would embrace its judg-
ment: they found themselves as coming up short, not just materially
but socially and culturally. “Objective” measures of “progress” could
not be ignored. This is what is at the root of the “auto-Orientalism”
exhibited by Turkey, Japan, and Russia to this day.
In other words, while emulation, especially as a military strategy,
is a relatively frequent phenomenon in world history, it took on a dif-
ferent depth once the processes that constitute modernity started roll-
ing. There are two separate issues here: (1) the nature of the modern
ontology; (2) the fact that modernity as a shared value system linked
previously independent communities – “The figuration of established-
outsider arises in the junction and interaction of different groups.
It emerges when formerly independent groups become increasingly
reciprocally dependent.”25 In modernity, emulation became a vehicle
for a totalizing kind of socialization, the like of which had not been
witnessed before. Unlike in the agrarian ages, borrowing in moder-
nity could no longer be limited to a certain technique or sector, since
inferiority in one sector of life signaled possible inferiority in others. 26
All aspects of life were connected, all governed by laws operating with
the same fundamental principles. 27 A remarkable feature of moder-
nity is the assumption that the same universal method of rationality
can explain every human dynamic. Modernity is characterized by the

24
See Gellner, Plough, Sword and also Nationalism. Also see Malesevic and
Haugaard, “Introduction”; Haugaard, “Power, Modernity”; and Meyer and
Jepperson, “‘Actors’ of Modern Society.”
25
Olofsson on Elias, in Andersen and Kaspersen, Classical and Modern Social
Theory, p. 371.
26
The uniqueness of this universalizing, “scientific,” evidentiary (and therefore
seemingly indisputable) character of the modern worldview is what Bull
misses in the numerous claims he makes about the nature of the nineteenth-
century European society of states; for instance, in his foreword to Gong’s
Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 2: “The arrogance of many Europeans, in
equating civilization with the particular civilization of Europe, was no less
than that of the Chinese.” I will have more to say about this distinction in
Chapter 2 .
27
Gellner, Nationalism, pp. 21–3.
40 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

increasing integration of various spheres of social life – all previously

thought to have their own separate essences and rules – into one uni-
versal ontology. 28 This worldview came to dominate European affairs
only in the nineteenth century (and even there was not fully hegem-
onic until the twentieth), but it had its roots in developments going
back several centuries.
A number of simultaneous processes were involved in this gradual
transition into modernity. First, the rise of absolutist states with rec-
ognized monopolies on state power29 was a critical turning point.30
At the same time, the bloodshed of the Thirty Years War had led
to a general fear of difference and motivated early-modern thinkers
like Hobbes31 to search for a universal stand-point beyond question,32
which then led to the emergence of ideas such as natural law, social
contract, and rational method, which were used at fi rst to justify
absolute sovereignty of monarchs, but later gave rise to an emphasis
on individual agency.33
The next two centuries in Western Europe are marked by two cru-
cial developments:34 a transfer of political power to the center and

28
See e.g. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 13; Gellner, Plough, Sword;
Gellner, Nationalism; Elias, Civilizing Process; Haugaard, “Power,
Modernity.” We may also invoke Bauman here, who argues that modernity
is characterized by the drive toward order, management, naming, and
segregating. See e.g. Modernity and the Holocaust ; Modernity and
Ambivalence.
29
Wight, Systems of States, p. 135.
30
Elias, Civilizing Process; Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 162.
31
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 5; see also Collins, From Divine
Cosmos, pp. 4, 6, 7, 28, 29, 32.
32
Blaney and Inayatullah, “Westphalian Deferral,” 32. In “Territoriality
and Beyond,” 157–62, Ruggie has an excellent review of the particular
manifestations of this search in a number of social spheres, e.g. on p. 158:
“What was true in the visual arts was equally true in politics: political space
came to be defi ned as it appeared from a single fi xed viewpoint. The concept
of sovereignty, then, was merely the doctrinal counterpart of the application
of single-point perspectival forms to the spatial organization of politics.”
33
See e.g. Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society; Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose.
See also Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity.
34
However, we should always keep in mind Ruggie’s point that “the reasons for
which things were done often had very little to do with what actually ended
up being done or what was made possible by those deeds.” See “Territoriality
and Beyond,” 166.
Modernity, ontological insecurity 41

a separation of the economy from the polity.35 In the pre-modern

and early-modern eras the polity and the economy were connected.
As wealth was more easily acquired by predation than production,
there was an ever-present incentive36 to reinvest gains in methods of
coercion. Kings regarded their kingdoms as their private domains,37
but their right to levy taxes was constantly challenged by nobles who
raised their own armies. The emergence of capitalism changed this
dynamic.38 The surplus generated by capitalism allowed specialists
of coercion to be bought off with the tax revenue, shifting power to
the economic realm and civil society.39 The accompanying “civiliz-
ing process” gradually converted most warrior nobles to “courtiers
and bureaucrats.” The centralization of power created networks of
interdependence, making individuals more sensitive to the needs of
others and putting them in more need of a universal set of manners.40
In other words, the rise of European “civilization” went hand in hand
with the rise of capitalism, and the accompanying march of scientific
rationality, as well as the use of such rationality to justify the exist-
ence and the power of the state.41
One of the key elements in the rise of an autonomous economic sec-
tor was a series of political revolutions and reforms in major Western
European countries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.42
These revolutions gave breathing room to civil society, undercut the
power of traditional elites, and in many ways prepared the ground
for the last phase for the emergence of the modern sovereign state –
characterized by industrialization, rationality, bureaucracy, and effi-
ciency in war-making, manifested especially in the state’s ability to

35
Gellner, Plough, Sword; Gellner, Nationalism. See also Mouzelis,
“Nationalism,” p. 125; Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 75; Ruggie,
“Territoriality and Beyond,” 151; Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State,
p. 429; Jones, European Miracle, p. 147.
36
Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 78.
37
Ibid., p. 79.
38
All of historical sociology, Marxist or otherwise, converges on this
argument.
39
Haugaard, “Power, Modernity,” p. 80.
40
Elias, Civilizing Process.
41
See Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters, where he argues that after the
Enlightenment, the state started amassing and administering resources in
order to organize society according to some preconceived model.
42
See Goldstone, “Cultural Orthodoxy.”
42 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

generate man-power from a new “national” base. All of these later

developments in some way flow from the ascendance of a production
economy and the accompanying increased integration/differentiation
of society43 (even if the spark of the Industrial Revolution was in some
way accidental).44
The point of this brief review is that the states that originally
remained aloof from these processes were in some ways victims of
their own “glorious” pasts.45 As Goldstone argues, there was noth-
ing unique about the revolutions in Western Europe – the Ottoman
Empire and China also had similar revolts around the same time. The
difference was in the outcomes. Whereas revolts in Western Europe
were interpreted as the failure of existing regimes and as signaling the
need for something new, in agrarian empires similar revolts ended up
reinforcing the traditional social hierarchies.46 In other words, while
the revolutions in Western Europe gave full steam to the ideas of
Enlightenment and social progress that had germinated in the develop-
ments of the seventeenth century (i.e. the search for universal rational/
natural laws and their applications to social life), in agrarian empires
the same processes were originally interpreted as the result of a devia-
tion from traditional methods that had brought success in the past.
The success of traditional methods explains why social and economic
life in agrarian empires of the European periphery were (temporarily)
frozen47 at around the same time that northwestern Europe started
undergoing momentous transformations. This analysis also overlaps
with the World-System explanation of why the Ottoman Empire and
Russia were originally left outside the growing world-economy – as
large agrarian empires, their economies were self-sustaining universes
for a longer time than was the case in the smaller states of Europe.48
What all of this means is that until the end of the eighteenth
century there was no great unbridgeable development gap between
the territorial states of northwestern Europe and the agrarian

43
E.g. Durkheim, Division of Labor, but also Bauman’s entire body of work.
44
See e.g. Goldstone, “Rise of the West”; Hobson, Eastern Origins;
Frank, ReORIENT.
45
And in contrast, societies which benefited most from these developments had
been facing near destruction not long ago. See Ruggie, “Territoriality and
Beyond,” 161.
46
Goldstone, “Cultural Orthodoxy,” 130.
47
Ibid., 131.
48
Wallerstein, Modern World-System, pp. 324–5.
Modernity, ontological insecurity 43

empires outside the European periphery.49 If that statement sounds

controversial, it is only because the nineteenth-century European
schemas about the civility, modernity, and social development (or
lack thereof) of the various regions of the world are still with us to
some degree.50 Since the nineteenth century, it has become custom-
ary to assume that something was culturally wrong with the states
left out of the “rise of the West.” What is forgotten is that prior to
at least the eighteenth century, social and economic life in countries
such as the Ottoman Empire, Russia, or China was not so differ-
ent from other agrarian empires now considered part of “Western
Civilization,” such as Spain. 51 Wallerstein points out that the develop-
ment of the absolutist monarchies in the Ottoman Empire and Russia
in the sixteenth century shared substantial parallels with develop-
ments in Western Europe. 52 Collins documents the indigenous rise of
merchant capitalism within Japan, 53 just as other scholars have docu-
mented similar processes and trade booms elsewhere in the universe
of agrarian empires.54 I have already pointed to Goldstone’s argument
about political revolts in agrarian empires occurring around the same
time as those in northwestern Europe (1750–1850). These revolts had
different outcomes, but were ushered in by similar causes and bot-
tlenecks in the economy.
Broadly speaking, then, prior to the nineteenth century, there were
two parallel lines of state development trajectory in the world, which
continued to overlap. On the one hand, there were states that were
constituted as “advanced organic,” agrarian, gunpowder empires,
such as the Ottoman Empire, India, Russia, China, and Japan. 55 On
the other hand, the smaller territorial states of northwestern Europe,
most notably, England, France, Netherlands, perhaps also Sweden,

49
See e.g. Aydın: “The Ottomans followed developments in military technology
in Europe very closely and were able to keep pace with the innovations in
Europe until the second half of the eighteenth century.” Anti-Westernism in
Asia, p. 17.
50
See Goldstone, “Problem of”; also see Collins, “Sociological Guilt-Trip”;
Wallerstein, “Development of the Concept of Development.”
51
For an antidote to nineteenth-century views of comparative history, start
with Braudel, Mediterranean.
52
Wallerstein, Modern World-System, p. 313.
53
Collins, “Asian Route.”
54
Goldstone, “Problem of.”
55
Also Spain – but Spain was an original member of the Westphalian system.
44 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

and later Prussia, had avoided imperial constitution as a result of

the Thirty Years War and the Westphalian Settlement, 56 but were
increasingly interconnected with each other through the formation of
a regional society of states (an arrangement formalized by Westphalia
and backed by the historical bond of Christendom) and a capitalist
economy.57
Obviously, even prior to the nineteenth century there were cer-
tain key developments within the states of the second group that
were not experienced by states in the fi rst, such as the abolition of
serfdom, decline of feudalism, and the emergence of early-modern
political thought. However, had it not been for the successful revo-
lutions and reforms of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
these developments could have been remembered as divergences
that went nowhere, just as in the agrarian empires of their counter-
parts. Furthermore, empires on the European periphery were not
completely oblivious to the beneficial results of various advances in
Western Europe, even if they lacked a precise understanding of the
causes and were focused mostly on the end results. As noted above,
Russia had decided it would be a good idea to copy certain Western
institutions as early as the late seventeenth century; the Ottoman
Empire had the same idea not too long after, and in fact was bor-
rowing piecemeal military technology long before then. The crucial
fact, however, was that all interacting states at that time were ruled
by traditional monarchies (leaving aside the issue of religious differ-
ences for the moment). This is why, initially, the desire to copy the
successful models in Europe was restricted mostly to the military
sector.
However, the French Revolution, and subsequently the Industrial
Revolution, changed this equation considerably. Prior to the French
Revolution, international politics were constrained not by the rule
of law but by the principle of dynastic legitimacy and the ensuing
homology in the domestic social structures of major states. 58 The
French Revolution challenged that order by ushering in the prin-
ciple of popular sovereignty, articulated in “holistic, messianic

56
Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, p. 88.
57
Watson, Evolution of International Society, p. 272.
58
Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 199. Also see Ruggie, “Territoriality and
Beyond,” 151–2.
Modernity, ontological insecurity 45

and universalist”59 form. This development introduced a heteroge-

neous element to what had been a homogeneous system.60 Mlada
Bukovansky underlines the transformative effect the French Revo-
lution had on the international system: “Revolutionary ideas dir-
ectly challenged the legitimacy of dynastic, monarchical regimes,
and … the demonstration effects of the mobilizing power of popu-
lar sovereignty and nationalism invited emulation, but emulation
of a technique rooted in popular sovereignty … would also chal-
lenge the legitimacy of dynastic regimes (both from within and from
without).”61 These developments were further aided by the Industrial
Revolution. Although most scholars disagree with his chronological
ordering, Gellner’s general point about the intimate link between
the emergence of industrialization and nationalism62 in Europe can-
not be denied. The geopolitical struggles described by Bukovansky
above gave rise to states with unprecedented infrastructural powers,
which were then used to break down local communities and their
segmentary worldviews.63
Along with the advent of mass schooling,64 the continuous world-
view of industria swept over the emerging population of modern
individuals. The modern “individual” constructed by this world-
view has no essence and, like atoms, is interchangeable with other
individuals,65 lives in a world governed by natural laws that can
be discerned through scientific reasoning, and serves the state only
because the state is rational and represents the collective will of
individuals.66 The twin revolutions in the political and economic
realms at the turn of the eighteenth century dismantled the trad-
itional gemeinshaft order for good67 in the leading states of Europe,
and replaced it with Gesellschaft communities integrated through
the principle of nationalism.

59
Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 198.
60
Ibid., 199; Halliday, “International Society as Homogeneity,” 435.
61
Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 200.
62
Gellner, Nationalism, p. 32.
63
Mouzelis, “Nationalism.”
64
See Ramirez and Boli, “Political Construction.”
65
See also Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond,” 157–8.
66
Haugaard, “Power, Modernity.” Also see Giddens, Modernity and Self-
identity.
67
A fact very well recognized by contemporary sociologists such as Tönnies
and Durkheim.
46 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

The modern international system

The modern international system emerged from these developments.
The emphasis on the peace of Westphalia as the origin of the modern
states system really does a disservice by obscuring the degree to which
modern-day international dynamics, inequalities, and hierarchies
were shaped by nineteenth-century events.68
Bukovansky argues that it was within that century that European
politics truly started resembling a “state of nature.”69 Prior to the
nineteenth century, wars had been constrained by the shared norms
stemming from the homology in domestic structures: “The balance of
power was understood in such a way that compensations in territory,
wealth, or prestige, were considered a monarchical right … Neither
contiguity nor national homogeneity were major priorities of eight-
eenth century monarchs.”70 The French Revolution introduced the
idea of fighting in the name of universal principles of liberty, equal-
ity, and fraternity,71 and led to the rise of the belief that any action
against a state that did not stand for those principles was legitimate
and justified.72 For a brief while, these developments in France had a
destabilizing impact on the European states system, but this destabi-
lization was temporarily resolved after the Napoleonic Wars. Part of
the reason for that outcome was the post-revolutionary abandonment
of many new ideals in France, which made possible France’s reintegra-
tion into the society of states. The transition to the new system was
managed under the Concert of Europe arrangement, which gave some
states time to gradually come around to the new principle of popular
sovereignty73 (completing processes already under way), and bought
others time to try to fend off the inevitable.
The effect on the rest of the world, however, of this new, mod-
ern European worldview, as politically manifested first in the French
Revolution, was much more devastating.74 E. H. Carr famously analyzed

68
Bukovansky, “Altered State”; Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose; Hobson and
Sharman, “Enduring Place”; Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society; Mann,
“Predation and Production.”
69
Bukovansky, “Altered State,” 213.
70
Ibid., 205. 71 Ibid., 211. 72
Ibid., 213.
73
Also see Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, p. 122, for the transformative effect of
the nineteenth century on the articulation of state legitimacy in this direction.
74
Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place.”
The modern international system 47

the link between Enlightenment idealism and European imperialism in

The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939. As he points out, nineteenth-
century European worldviews were increasingly characterized by the
belief that self-interest was not only rational but also moral.75 Carr calls
this worldview “the harmony of interests” doctrine, and argues that it
was first pushed along “by the unparalleled expansion of production,
population and prosperity, which marked the hundred years following
the publication of The Wealth of Nations and the invention of the steam
engine.”76 As competition got tougher, this worldview got a second push
from Darwinism, which was applied to international politics to justify
the ruthless land-grab of the latter part of the nineteenth century:

The path of progress is strewn with the wreck of nations; traces are every-
where to be seen of the hecatombs of inferior races, and of victims who
found not the narrow way to greater perfection. Yet these dead peoples
are, in very truth, the stepping stones on which mankind has arisen to the
higher intellectual and deeper emotional life of to-day.77

Not only was this seen as an apt description of how things were,
but also of how things should be. The British in particular believed
that their empire was serving a higher purpose. Again as quoted by
Carr, Cecil Rhodes wrote: “I contend that we are the fi rst race in the
world, and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the
human race.”78
Imperialism was not a phenomenon unique to the nineteenth cen-
tury, but the particular tenor and justifications of nineteenth-century
imperialism were unprecedented. As pointed out by Hobson and
Sharman, prior to the nineteenth century, a superior Europe-as-West
identity had gradually emerged as Europeans, originally held together
by the loose ties of Christendom, increasingly came to define them-
selves negatively79 against the natives80 in Africa and the Americas,81
as well as the infidels of the Ottoman Empire.82 This would crystallize

75 76
Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, pp. 43–5. Ibid., p. 47.
77
Ibid: citing a 1900 international relations book, p. 48. 78 Ibid., p. 72.
79
See Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 166; Neumann and Welsh, “The Other.”
80
See the discussion of Colombus in Blaney and Inayatullah, Problem of
Difference, p. 10.
81
Yet settler states in the Americas were incorporated into the idea of “West”
relatively easily. See Watson, Evolution of International Society, p. 234.
82
Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 85.
48 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

into a full-fledged racist ideology in the eighteenth and the nineteenth

centuries, affecting even the understandings of what constitutes a
“Great Power.” Echoing Carr, Hobson and Sharman argue that “the
British (and others) engaged in imperialism not simply because ‘they
could’ (as materialists assume). Rather they engaged in it because they
believed they should.”83 Governing large areas in the “inferior non-
European” world was taken as a mark of great power status.
Hobson and Sharman perfectly summarize the new ideas behind
the nineteenth-century reconstruction of European state identity.84
Allow me to quote at length, as it is extremely pertinent to the dis-
cussion here:

Particularly important was the construction of the theory of Oriental

Despotism … It prescribed that Western states were progressive and eco-
nomically successful because they were liberal, while Eastern states were
imagined as but tyrannical regimes that stifled economic progress. Moreover,
this characterization also enabled Europeans to present or construct the East
as a ‘despotic threat.’ This theory was complemented by the construction
of the ‘Peter Pan theory of the East’. Here the East was imagined as weak,
passive, helpless and inert such that it was deemed axiomatic that it would
be fundamentally incapable of self-development or growing up. By contrast
the West was imagined as strong, proactive, independent and progressive
… Within this framework, the East was essentialized in terms of a passive
and helpless female, the West as a strong and independent male … Last
but not least, social Darwinism and scientific racism were important. This
enabled the Europeans to construct a civilizational league table in which
the “three races” of mankind were classified within three divisions … – the
Whites who resided in the ‘advanced’ First World of Europe (Division 1);
the Yellows who resided in the ‘barbaric’ Second World (Division 2); and
the Blacks who resided in the ‘savage’ Third World (Division 3).85

All of these ideas were clearly manifested in nineteenth-century inter-

national law, which was centered on a premise that states had to meet
a Standard of Civilization in order to be treated as equal participants
in the international system.86
Edward Keene points out that, as a seventeenth-century legal
thinker, Grotius, who is usually credited with the idea of a European
83
Ibid., 87.
84
Also see Hobson, Eastern Origins, p. 228.
85
Ibid., p. 88. See also Kingsbury, “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 69.
86
See also Gong, Standard of “Civilisation”, pp. 6, 14, 24.
Modernity, stratification, and the production of “Outsiders” 49

society of states, was quite comfortable with the hypothetical idea

of equality between European and non-European states.87 By the
nineteenth century, however, the international system was very much
divided: “there was an order promoting toleration in Europe, and an
order promoting civilization beyond.”88 Focusing only on the former
obscures the degree to which international dynamics beyond most of
Europe were constituted along hierarchical principles.89 Keene also
argues that, as a result, Europeans thought of sovereignty outside of
the Western world very much as divisible:

While, say, a nineteenth-century British diplomat would have found it

inconceivable that he might claim a right to exercise any sovereign preroga-
tives over the French, his counterpart in the colonial service would have
thought it perfectly appropriate to take over some of the sovereign preroga-
tives that an Indian prince possessed, even ones guaranteed by prior treat-
ies, if that was what it took to facilitate progress or to stamp out corruption
and barbarism.90

What has to be realized is that the civility various European states

accorded each other in the nineteenth century and the utter lack of
respect they showed to the peoples elsewhere in the world were con-
sequences of the same modern, “enlightened” worldview. As Michael
Mann puts it: “Precisely because Europeans as a whole constituted a
moral community, they could not be enslaved.”91 The “freest people”
in the world, however, shackled most of mankind in the name of civi-
lization, which was precisely Norbert Elias’s point when he observed
that civilizing processes go along with de-civilizing processes.

Modernity, stratification, and the production of “Outsiders”

In some ways, then, the growing social inequalities and hierarchy
of the nineteenth-century international system can be seen as a

87
Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 109.
88
Ibid., p. 7. See also Salter, Barbarians and Civilization, p. 15: “In the
nineteenth century, ‘civilization’ was taken to represent a mission of
homogenization and ‘improvement’. Thus, the rhetoric of ‘civilization’ was
quickly appropriated by imperial ideology to mean the ‘civilizing mission.’”
89
Ibid.; Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place.”
90
Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 7.
91
Mann, “Predation and Production,” p. 65.
50 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

natural consequence of the increasing dominance of the “modern”

worldview. Two aspects of modernity made such developments
possible.92
First is the idea that the scientific method can be applied to every-
thing. The scientific method is very much about “objective” meas-
urements and comparisons,93 which are then used to develop more
efficient solutions to problems, leading ultimately to progress. Applied
to international politics, the dominance of such a worldview94 implied
that distinctions between states and cultures could only be judged
on a universal scale of “scientifically” measured accomplishments.95
Civilizations that were unfamiliar to Europeans could no longer be
understood as simply doing things differently (in ways in which the
logic of such difference escaped the Europeans); such difference was
interpreted as inferiority. As Mitchell notes:

These differences were not the differences within a self, which would
be understood as an always-divided identity; they were the differences
between a self and its opposite, the opposite that makes possible such an
imaginary, undivided self … [T]he domination of the West over the non-
Western world depended on this manner of creating a “West”, a singular
Western self-identity.96

This conclusion about the superiority of the Western identity seemed

to have empirical support in the undeniable material progress of the
(north-)West in the nineteenth century.
Second is the rise of nationalism , which on the one hand helped
to integrate increasingly atomized individuals and bolster the
modern state, yet on the other, gave rise to a marked differentiation
between insiders and outsiders, 97 with morality being aligned
with the interests, desires, and needs of the former. Furthermore,
nineteenth-century conceptions of nationalism were shaped by

92
Gellner, Nationalism, pp. 19–39; Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence,
Introduction.
93
See also Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, pp. 13, 60.
94
Mitchell points out that the age of exhibition with its ordering and
cataloguing impulse was “necessarily the colonial age” p. 13 (italics mine).
95
See Salter, Barbarians and Civilization, p. 16, for a review of nineteenth-
century “scientific” theories of societal development.
96
Colonising Egypt, p. 166.
97
See Chapter 2; as well as Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, pp. 63–4.
Modernity, stratification, and the production of “Outsiders” 51

“scientific racism”98 and were therefore informed by biological con-

ceptions of the “nation” (another side effect of the transferability of
modern epistemological principles).
The particular manifestation of nineteenth-century principles in
the society of European states as a Standard of Civilization can also
be parsed as a common sociological phenomenon, one that often
accompanies societal formations. The hierarchical structure of the
international system in the nineteenth century resembles very much
what Weber called a socially stratified society. According to Weber, in
societies where market rules are not in full operation and are, rather,
controlled by convention, culture, and rules of conduct, the result is
rigid social stratification and monopolistic appropriation (which is
an apt description for nineteenth-century imperialism). If a society
is stratified by status, social strata and the status groups placed in
those strata exhibit features of “closed” social relationships whereby
“the participation of certain persons is excluded, limited, or subject
to conditions.”99 This is significant because:

A closed social relationship is capable of guaranteeing its monopolized

advantages to its members through a) competition freely engaged in within
the group; b) regulation or rationing of such advantages; and c) their appro-
priation by individuals or small groups on a permanent basis, in which case
they become more or less inalienable. This last case is a closure within,
as well as against outsiders. Such appropriated advantages will be called
“rights”.100

Membership in social strata is determined by lifestyle factors and

is usually hereditary. Socially stratified societies are also marked by
hierarchies of power, whereby certain high-ranking status groups
monopolize economic and political advantages.101 This monopoliza-
tion could be legitimized under a rubric of “rights” in the manner
described in the passage cited above. As a result, in societies stratified
purely according to social status, there is little to no upward mobility.
The most familiar example of this type of stratification is the caste
system in India.

98
Mann, “Predation and Production,” p. 67.
99
Weber, Economy and Society, p. 97.
100
Ibid., p. 96.
101
Weber, Basic Concepts.
52 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

Essentially, the dominant norms of such a society are based on what

Raymond Murphy terms “collectivist criteria” of closure. Closure is
“the process of mobilizing power in order to enhance or defend a
group’s share of rewards and resources.”102 Property, credentials, and
assessments of individual material capability in general are examples
of individualist criteria of exclusion. Collectivist criteria of exclusion
are based on group characteristics such as race, culture, religion, and
physical traits, and are designed specifically to transfer advantage to
members of the in-group. It was no accident that Great Britain, as the
fi rst country to enjoy the benefits of the Industrial Revolution, was
also the staunchest supporter of the Standard of Civilization. Closure
criteria may circumscribe the behavior of group members as well.
Keene notes that toward the end of the nineteenth century Germany
grew increasingly skeptical about the twin pillars of “toleration” and
“civilization,” and its revisionist maneuvers as a latecomer to both
industrialization and imperialism put its own “civilized” status in
question.103
Especially pertinent here is Norbert Elias’s work on “the Established
and Outsiders,” which emerged out of Elias’s analysis of the social
dynamics in Leicester (“The Winston Parva Study”).104 This urban
settlement was organized into three districts, Zones 1, 2, and 3. The
inhabitants of Zone 1 were white-collar professionals, whereas Zones
2 and 3 were both working class. The entire community believed Zone
1 to be the best area to live. Zone 2 (the “old village”) inhabitants,
while poor, considered their area respectable and looked down upon
Zone 3 dwellers, whom they characterized as dirty and quarrelsome,
which was not actually the case for most of Zone 3. The most puzzling
part of the study was the fact, observed by Elias, that Zone 3 inhabit-
ants “seemed to accept, with a kind of puzzled resignation, that they
belonged to a group of less virtue and respectability.”105 They resented
the verdict of the other zones, and were also shamed by it.
Elias explains this curious dynamic by reference to the fact that the
“old village” of Zone 2 was indeed older than other zones, and as a
result had a network of “old families” who took it upon themselves to

102
Murphy, “Structure of Closure,” 548.
103
Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, p. 123.
104
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders.
105
Ibid., p. xvi.
The social impact of the “rise of the West” 53

protect the respectability of the entire zone. It was this cohesiveness

that made it possible for the “old villagers” to exercise exclusionary
closure on Zone 3 individuals, barring them from participation in
public life. Zone 3 individuals could not retaliate because they lacked
the necessary cohesion for such an organization and also because they
felt inferior: “to some extent, their own conscience was on the side of
the detractors. They themselves agreed with the ‘village’ people that
it was bad not to be able to control one’s children or to get drunk and
noisy and violent.”106 Even if such criticisms did not apply to them
personally, they felt shame because they lived in the same zone with
some people who did act that way.
Elias believed that the dynamic exhibited by the subjects of the
Winston Parva study was duplicated in most power relations: “In all
these cases the more powerful group look upon themselves as the bet-
ter people, as endowed with a kind of group charisma, with a specific
virtue shared by all its members and lacked by others. What is more
… the ‘superior’ people may make the less powerful people themselves
feel that they lack virtue – that they are inferior in human terms.”107
A similar process influenced the thinking of the decision-makers,
elites, and intelligentsia outside the European society of states of the
nineteenth century. They felt shame108 because they lived in “semi-
civilized” or “barbaric” states.

The social impact of the “rise of the West”

While the “rise of the West,” which culminated in the great polit-
ical enlightenment, technological advancement, and material prowess
of (north-)Western Europe (and the United States) in the nineteenth
century, is an undeniable fact of history, the hierarchical arrangement
of the international system at that time was anything but an adulter-
ated reflection of the distribution of capabilities. The European soci-
ety of states and its Standard of Civilization is best understood as a

106
Ibid., p. 101. 107 Ibid., p. xvi.
108
Goffman’s point about shame is quite telling: “One assumes that
embarrassment is a normal part of normal social life, the individual
becoming uneasy not because he is personally maladjusted but rather
because he is not … embarrassment is not an irrational impulse breaking
through social prescribed behavior, but part of this orderly behavior itself.”
Goffman, Interaction Ritual, pp. 109, 111.
54 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

closed social stratum of actors, who used a collectivist criterion of

closure to exclude non-members (and individualist criteria to socially
evaluate members). Non-members were denied basic rights such as
contractual guarantees. Furthermore, they were stigmatized as being
inferior, backward, barbaric, effeminate, childish, despotic, and in
need of enlightenment. The fact that non-European states did not
have the material capabilities of European states was used as evidence
of the scientific validity of these claims. The stigma was then used to
further exclude such states from the sovereign protections accorded
by society, opening them up to further European exploitation, leading
to more relative backwardness, and giving more “objective” credence
to the stigma.
What is more important for the purposes of this argument, how-
ever, is the fact that such European notions about progress were very
much internalized by the elites in the “semi-sovereign” states of the
nineteenth century. Even if they did not completely buy into theories
of racial inferiority, they accepted the validity of other “objective,”
“scientific” judgments about their countries and compatriots. This
collective psychology is at the root of elite efforts, witnessed all over
the semi-periphery in the nineteenth century, to “pass” as Europeans
by adopting European fashions, speaking European languages among
themselves, and learning European arts. All such behavior could be
seen as part of an effort to distance oneself from one’s neighborhood.
The elites outside of the Western core accepted the judgment of
“civilization” because in their efforts to catch up with the West they
had become habituated to the continuous worldview of modernity.
Every institution they copied in an effort to keep up with the West,
starting with military training, brought them closer to the core. Once
they accepted the modern worldview, they could not but feel shame
(even if at the same time they felt resentment). At some point the words
“reform,” “modernization,” and “Westernization” became synony-
mous.109 Moreover, the people most exposed to the ideas of a global
social hierarchy were also the people who were in the best position

109
Even today it is difficult to separate these concepts. At the very least, Europe
is still seen as totally and naturally “modern”; whereas in other places,
Westerners look for “authentic” experiences untouched by modernity (as if
such a thing were possible). Media coverage of non-Western areas almost
invariably focuses on un-“modern” aspects of life, which are at best described
as cute, quaint, or exotic, and at worst as scary, unsafe, and unpredictable.
The social impact of the “rise of the West” 55

to effect domestic change: the intelligentsia, the military (the military

was always the fi rst to modernize), and the ruling elite. All of the key
institutions of the modern nation state such as nationalism, mass-
schooling, and modern bureaucracy took their form around this time;
not long afterward they were dutifully emulated outside of Europe by
those states that still had the capability to shape their own domestic
policies. Bauman’s point about East European educated classes being
the most avid students of the Enlightenment applies equally to the
cases at hand here: “They needed a mighty lever to lift society all the
way up to the ideal: only a state wielding absolute power could serve
as such a lever, and such a state, both able and willing to serve, was
still to be created.”110 The emulation of key institutions of the mod-
ern “gardening”111 state, even in their incomplete forms, at precisely
the moment during which the elites in the “backward” countries had
internalized the judgment of history, was instrumental in cementing
the ontological insecurity created by such backwardness in (proto-)
national psyches. As will be demonstrated in Chapter 2 , the globali-
zation of the established-outsider dynamic is unique to the modern
international system.
I am not implying that elites in the Ottoman Empire or Japan (or
even Russia) bought into the European rhetoric of being on a civilizing
mission to rescue the rest of humanity from itself. Rather, what I am
arguing is that they internalized the idea of linear progress and the
idea that European material advancement was somehow connected
to European culture and lifestyle.112 Even those elites who rejected or
resented Europe did not reject this dichotomy of backwardness and
modernity.113 They believed, along with their European contempor-
aries, that there really was a developmental lag between civilizations.

110 111
Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 37. Ibid., p. 20.
112
Watson observes this dynamic uncritically in “European International
Society,” p. 31: “the nineteenth century is notable for the creation throughout
Asia, Africa, and Oceania of Europeanized or Westernized elites. The
Europeans and the Americans offered the instruction, and usually met with
an enthusiastic response … The mastery of Western governmental practice
and military technology enabled these elites to run a modern state.”
113
One of the interesting manifestations of this was in the discipline of
history. Modernity brought with it the desire to write universal histories
(see Fukuyama, End of History); so the discipline of history too was a
creation of nineteenth-century European ontology. At the same time, history
is essential for the nation-construction projects. This is how the ironic
56 Outsiders and insiders in the international system

In other words, the problem of relative strength was no longer seen

simply as difference in material capability (which is par for the course
throughout human history) but had become a moral, social, and cul-
tural issue. It had become an existential dilemma par excellence.
Elites in Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan all entered the
twentieth century with the same internalized lesson: their countries
were “behind” the West in every aspect and something radical had to
be done to change this status quo. That motivation is what gave rise to
revisionist governments across the board within the fi rst 30 years of
the century. However, the reactionary ideologies of these revisionist
governments were themselves very much products of modernity. At
the very least, they exhibited the same faith in the power of the “mod-
ern” state, a perfectly rational response after the Second Industrial
Revolution. Each regime also exhibited an almost feverish commit-
ment to do whatever was necessary, including the sacrifice of millions
of lives, to catch up with “the West.”
Given the violent lengths these countries went to in the twentieth
century to gain equal standing with the West, it really is remarkable
that their post-defeat strategies turned out to be so peaceful, at least
in terms of foreign policy. Despite appearances, however, the people
of these states never stopped seeking status in the international sys-
tem. There are as many ways of bettering one’s status in the inter-
national system as there are in domestic societies. It should be evident
from the discussion in this chapter that power relations in the modern
international system have never been purely about military capabil-
ity – what they are really about is the subject of the next chapter.

situation of nationalist movements justifying their own raisons d’être by

historical accounts based in the work of European historians came about.
Specific examples of this phenomenon will be discussed in the case-study
chapters.
2 States as outsiders

Much could be gained from a better understanding of the dynamics of

established-outsider figurations and thus of the problems involved in the
changing position of groups in relation to each other, of the rise of groups
into the position of monopolistic establishment from which others are
excluded, and the decline and fall from such a position to another where
they themselves are, in some respects, outsiders.
Norbert Elias, Established and Outsiders

Introduction
In this chapter, I advance the argument that social relations between
the states throughout the history of the modern international system
have often resembled the “established-outsider” figuration outlined
by Elias in his seminal work with the same title. I also demonstrate
that negative assessments of states in the international system have
never been value-neutral objective descriptions of reality, but are best
thought of as “stigma” labels in the sociological sense. This, in turn,
implies that the integration of the historically outsider states into the
modern international system cannot be explained without the larger
normative context of international stigmatization.
Stigmatized states are very much driven by that condition. At times
when there is the opportunity to give new direction to state policy,
such as the immediate aftermath of major defeat, the limited array of
social strategies dealing with stigmatization are dominantly featured
options in the domestic debates. The specific form those strategies take
and which one ultimately gets picked is contingent on the features of
the socio-normative hierarchy at a given time, but we may generally
predict that strategies which satisfy the social-status cravings of his-
torically stigmatized states will be both immediately preferred and
easier to sustain in the long run.

57
58 States as outsiders

The established-outsider dynamic

in the international system
There are several significant features of an “established-outsider”
power dynamic, each presenting a challenge to the established wis-
dom about power relations in the international system.
First of all, as Elias observed and described it, the “established
and outsiders” dynamic is the most generic form of a societal
hierarchy, one which, contrary to the predictions of materialist
theories,1 may emerge even in situations where there is great over-
lap between economic, physical, and even socio-cultural attributes
between actors. In Elias’s Winston Parva study, for instance, there
were “no differences in nationality, in ethnic descent, in ‘colour’ or
‘race’ between residents of the two areas; nor did they differ in their
type of occupation, their income and educational levels – in a word,
in their social class.”2 Nevertheless, there was a marked difference
between the social power of the two groups: “one part thought of
themselves as vastly superior to those of the Other,” and as a cor-
ollary, this in-group was able to both monopolize privileges and at
the same time make those who were excluded feel that they were
socially inferior.
The cause of the power differential is the second salient fea-
ture of the established-outsider dynamic. A higher degree of cohe-
sion and organization among some of the members of society is all
that is needed for power differentials to emerge. In Winston Parva,
“one group was formed by old residents established in the neigh-
bourhood for two or three generations and the other was a group of
newcomers.”3 Elias observed that cohesion in the old village was the
1
For instance, according to Waltz, because international competition puts the
units’ survival at risk, it follows that units cannot afford differentiation – the
anarchic structure generates “like units.” Waltz does not even consider the
possibility that a hierarchy may exist in such a situation; for him, the only
way such a system can become hierarchical is through the creation of a formal
authority structure, i.e. a world government. Theory of International Politics,
pp. 89–93. A similar materialist blind spot plagues the otherwise compelling
accounts provided by World-System theory. For Wallerstein, the dominance of
the European core is entirely reducible to economic dynamics and has nothing
to do with cultural or political coherence. See Zolberg, “Review,” 260, and
Skocpol, “Review,” 1085.
2
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xvii.
3
Ibid.
The established-outsider dynamic in the international system 59

principal cause of demarcation: “one could see here the limitations

of any theory which explains power differentials only in terms of a
monopolistic possession of non-human objects, such as weapons or
means of production, and disregards figurational aspects of power
differentials due purely to differences in the degree of organization
of the human beings concerned.”4 In the Winston Parva study, the
group of old residents had established among themselves “a common
mode of living and a set of norms,”5 which led them to perceive the
newcomers “as failing to observe these norms and restraints,”6 and
as a result, anomic.7 Furthermore, as noted above, the “newcomers”
in general agreed with these assessments and felt humiliated by their
association with the “bad” neighborhood. This particular observa-
tion of Elias should also raise questions about the early constructivist
optimism8 about the benevolent effect of normative pressures in the
international system.
The fact that the dominant group is able to produce feelings of
shame among the members of the other group is the third notable
feature of an “established-outsider” dynamic: the two groups share
a common value system, and as such are best thought of as a society.
After all, shame does not exist where there are no social bonds9 – it
is as direct evidence of membership in a society as one could fi nd.
As Cooley noted, “the thing that moves us to pride or shame is not
the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed senti-
ment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another’s mind.”10
Goffman also points out that embarrassment is a sign of abidance
by socially prescribed behavior, not a deviance from it.11 Individuals
who are not members of the same society and who do not share the
same normative outlook cannot accurately conceive how they will be
viewed by the other side.
In his study of stigma, Goffman remarks in passing that there is
only one way for a stigmatized individual to escape untouched by

4
Ibid., p. xviii. 5 Ibid., p. xxii. 6
Ibid., p. xxiv.
7
Emile Durkheim described anomie as a state of relative normlessness. See
Durkheim, Suicide.
8
E.g. Sikkink, “Transnational Politics,” 520.
9
For an overview of the concept of shame in social theory, see Scheff, “Shame
and the Social Bond.”
10
Cooley, Human Nature, p. 184
11
Goffman, Interaction Ritual, p. 111.
60 States as outsiders

his social failure: oblivion. Only a person “insulated by his alien-

ation, protected by identity beliefs of his own, [may] feel that he is
a full-fledged normal human being, and that we are the ones who
are not quite human.”12 In effect, only a person who is not part of a
society, and who therefore is aloof from its norms, can fully escape
the shame that comes from being stigmatized as an inferior. For
one to feel inferiority before another, one must have fi rst accepted
and internalized the normative standards that the other is using for
evaluation.
Imagine my grandmother on a tourist trip to Kaokoland in north-
ern Namibia, the territory of the Himba tribe. The Himba have so
far remained insulated from norms that dictate nudity to be sinful,
shameful, or “uncivilized,” and the Himba women go about their
daily business topless. My grandmother, having lived her whole life at
the intersection of Western and Muslim cultural norms, is a believer
in the benefits of modernity, an advocate for modesty in dress, and
has little to no awareness of the multiculturalist tolerance trends
of the last decades. My grandmother would strongly disapprove of
the Himba dress code. She would most likely want to convey her
disapproval to the local women, in a misguided attempt to educate
them. However, even if she got over the language barrier somehow,
my grandmother’s comments would fall on deaf ears; she could no
more shame the Himba women into covering up than they could con-
vince her to shed her blouse. My grandmother’s views are irrelevant to
the Himba women, as much as their views are irrelevant to her – they
are not members of the same society, and neither party has to make
any effort to see the world as the other sees it.
In the previous chapter, I argued that prior to the “long nineteenth
century,”13 autonomous states “outside” Europe had a relationship
with European states that was not unlike the relationship between
my grandmother and the Himba women, with each side being vaguely
aware of each other’s existence, but not shamed by the comparison.
Whatever interaction existed would surely (and did) lead to judgment
on each side, but would not have produced shame or pressures to

12
Goffman, Stigma, p. 6.
13
1789–1917, namely the period in which the modernist ontology discussed
in the previous chapter became hegemonic. See Hobsbawn, The Age of
Revolution; The Age of Capital; The Age of Empire.
The established-outsider dynamic in the international system 61

assimilate. Interaction between independent states before modern-

ity stopped short of convergence on the same normative standards.14
There was borrowing, but the act of borrowing was limited to the
product borrowed. For instance, impaling prisoners was introduced
to the Ottoman repertoire after interactions with Prince Voyvoda
Vlad III of Romania (also known as Dracula) in the fi fteenth cen-
tury – but borrowing this technique convinced the Ottomans no more
of the superiority of a Christian worldview than borrowing the phal-
anx formation had convinced the Spartans to worship Persian gods.
Cemil Aydın notes that, as late as the eighteenth century, “Ottoman
scholars accepted some of the new mathematical and astronomical
theories they learned from European books without feeling any need
to advocate wholesale importation of the new science.”15 It was not
until the articulation of the idea of a modern worldview that the social
barriers between states, which had successfully insulated them from
the judgments of others, came down. The secular, universal, totaliz-
ing claims of modernity gradually washed over alternative visions of
socio-political order.16
Previously, the surviving agrarian empires of pre-modernity were
outside the Westphalian states system, and their insular identity and
belief systems shielded them from being stigmatized by Europeans,
just as France, for instance, was spared the same fate in its interac-
tion with a more powerful Ottoman Empire in the fi fteenth century.
Afterwards, they became the fi rst “outsiders” of the Westphalian
states system. In other words, these states came to agree with the
“established” members of the Westphalian system that they were
inferior17 by internalizing the stigma of this developmental lag. In
other words, the “Rise of the West” had the effect of creating an

14
“It was never the case, before Europe unified the globe, that relations
between states or rulers that were members of different regional international
systems could be conducted on the same moral and legal basis as relations
within the system, for this basis was provided in part by principles that
were culturally particular and exclusive.” Bull and Watson, Expansion
of International Society, p. 5 (emphasis mine). See also Bull, Anarchical
Society, p. 14; Naff, “Ottoman Empire,” p. 144.
15
Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 17.
16
As Kingsbury notes, through this process, “Non-European forms of political
organization that might have attained widespread legitimacy as alternatives
to the European-style sovereign state were subordinated and delegitimized as
global models.” See “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 74.
17
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, pp. xv–xvi.
62 States as outsiders

international society of states where there was none before, yet the
evidence for that society is not in participation by non-European
actors in international conferences or treaties,18 but rather in the
transformation of the self-images of these actors. The standard
English School reading of the expansion of the European society of
states glosses over these social dynamics. For instance, Bull states
that “while non-European communities in some cases were incor-
porated in the international system against their will, they have
taken their places in international society because they themselves
have sought the rights of membership of it and the protection of its
rules.”19 While that willingness on the part of the non-European
actors is certainly part of the story, what traditional accounts miss
is the effect the internalization of a foreign worldview would have
on the ontological security20 of these states. As discussed previously,
ontological security fi rst and foremost entails having a consistent
sense of self and having that sense affi rmed by others. As I will
discuss below, the incorporation of the modern worldview created
a rupture in the traditionally self-centered worldviews of agrarian
empires and forced them to rearticulate their new state identities21
around the anxiety of “demonstrable” inferiority and the goal of
catching up with the West by following its “standards.”
In this manner, after the nineteenth century the interactions between
non-European states and the Westphalian core came to resemble the
established-outsider figuration described by Elias. 22 In other words,
from this point onward, the actions of the non-European states which
were part of the modern states system are best understood as actions
of outsider states dealing with the stigma of being developmentally
behind.

18
Bull, “Emergence of a Universal International Society,” p. 121.
19
Ibid.
20
See Laing, Divided Self, pp. 39–40, and Giddens, Consequences of
Modernity, p. 92. For a defense of the applicability of this concept to
state behavior, see Steele, Ontological Security, Introduction, and Mitzen,
“Ontological Security,” 352–4.
21
The rearticulation of which was also demanded by the onset of the age of
nationalism.
22
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, pp. xv–xvi.
Stigma in the international system 63

Stigma in the international system

As Goffman points out, each society has its means of categorizing
its members, “and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary
and natural for … each of these categories.”23 These attributes cre-
ate anticipations about how various parties are supposed to act; they
are, in effect, transformed into “normative expectations.”24 If evi-
dence is presented that the actor in question possesses an attribute
(or a number of attributes) which makes him different than what he is
expected to be, that agent is “reduced in our minds from a whole and
usual person to a tainted, discounted one.”25 An attribute that sets the
agent apart in this manner is a stigma. The agents who do not possess
a stigma are normals. Bauman adds that “the institution of stigma is
eminently fit for the task of immobilizing the stranger in his identity
of the excluded Other.”26 I contend that states which fall short of the
normative ideals of international society at any given time can be (and
have been) stigmatized – in other words, tainted and discounted, both
in the minds of others and their own – in the same manner.
Let me anticipate a possible objection here to using the concept of
stigmatization to describe relations between states: it may be con-
tended that pointing out negative attributes is a form of truth telling,
merely a description of objective reality. This argument may be made
in two ways.
First, it may be argued that identity attributes of the states – i.e.
the best candidates to qualify as stigma-like labels in international
relations – are irrelevant to foreign policy decisions because such
decisions are made by states, which are rational actors. For exam-
ple, in the realist account27 of international relations, states deduce
threat from material capabilities. Such assessments are supposed to
be extrapolated from objective measures of empirical facts, such as
size of the army, military equipment, natural resources, and wealth.

23 24 25
Goffman, Stigma, p. 2. Ibid. Ibid.
26
Baumann, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 68.
27
The realist literature which shares these basic materialist assumptions is too
broad to cite here, but for an overview of the assumptions of the paradigm,
see Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 74–7; Doyle, Ways of
War and Peace, Part I; Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 96–113, or Keohane,
Neorealism and Its Critics.
64 States as outsiders

Constructivists argue, however, that seemingly objective assessments

of military capabilities are always fi ltered through an ideational
prism. 28 Even great power status is in part socially conferred. 29 For
instance, Levy counts the following among the operational indicators
of a great power: “possession of a high level of power capabilities …;
participation in international congresses …; de facto identification as
a Great Power by an international conference or organization; admis-
sion to a formal or informal organization of Powers; participation in
Great Power guarantees, territorial compensation or partitions; and
generally, treatment as a relative equal by other Great Powers.”30
All of the italicized operational indicators have something to do with
commonly held perceptions of the international community, which
is subject to change over time. As Hobson and Sharman point out,
“states are not universally imbued with a pre-ordained knowledge of
what makes a state a great power.”31 Talleyrand managed to reinstate
France as a great power, despite Napoleon’s defeat, by arguing that
it now had the right kind of government, i.e. monarchy. 32 Austria in
1815 and Britain in 1945 were recognized as great powers because of
their democratic experience and cultural status, despite the fact that
they lacked raw power.33 Is it really plausible that it does not mat-
ter whether a state is treated thusly or whether it receives the “Sick
Man of Europe” attitude the Ottoman Empire got in the nineteenth
century (or the diplomatic shunning of the Bolshevik government
after the revolution, for that matter)? Social standards masquerad-
ing as objective assessments create and perpetuate power hierarchies,
and this is why the stigmatization framework is particularly apt for
describing relations in the modern international system. Even today,
in assessing threat, it matters whether nuclear weapons are held by
Israel or Iran, India, or Pakistan.
This brings me to the second objection to thinking about assess-
ments of states as stigma labels. This is the claim, which is closer

28
See, for instance, Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 130–8.
29
Suzuki, “Seeking ‘Legitimate’,” 3. Waltz also implicitly concedes this point
when he suggests that we can rely on “common sense” to identify the great
powers of an era. Theory of International Politics, p. 131.
30
Levy, “Historical Trends,” 279.
31
Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 87.
32
Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose, pp. 136–7.
33
Simpson, Great Powers, p. 107.
Stigma in the international system 65

to the liberal school of thought in IR, 34 that even identity-based

descriptions are based on objective assessments and, therefore, are
not stigmas. In other words, Israel, even with nuclear weapons, is
not a threat because it is an objectively democratic, economically
developed, rationally managed country, and therefore can be trusted
with the responsibility of managing nuclear weapons. The problem
with that argument is that even if we were to concede for the sake of
argument that labels such as “democratic” or “economically devel-
oped” could be objectively affi xed to a country’s description – which
is doubtful at best – whether or not various attributes have a real
existence has very little to do with the question of whether they are
stigmas or status symbols. By pointing out the stigma-like properties
of state assessments, my intention is not to claim that such descrip-
tions are entirely constructed and have no resemblance to “reality.”
In fact, studies of stigma emphasize just the opposite: the existence
of a stigmatizing attribute is often very much observable and rather
indisputable. 35 However, a blind person is not blind because of his
stigma; but neither is his blindness the cause of his stigma. It is the
expectations of the society he lives in that defi ne how such an attribute
will be received. Stigmatizing attributes can run the gamut from very
“real” physical “abnormalities” to the more obviously socially con-
structed aspects of identity such as religious affi liation or ethnicity.
That the latter kind of attribute is more evidently a product of our
collective imaginings than of physically verifiable difference makes
it no more or less stigmatizing. Socially constructed attributes of an
actor “feel” as “real” as their material counterparts, 36 and both types
of attributes have no inherent value in and of themselves – whether
they are perceived as normal or discrediting depends on larger social
frameworks of value.
In Winston Parva, the newcomers were stigmatized despite the fact
that both the newcomers and the members of the old establishment
were fellow nationals, members of the same society. As discussed
above, members of the old establishment were able to exclude and
stigmatize “outsiders” because they had a higher degree of cohesion

34
See e.g. Slaughter, “International Law.”
35
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 67.
36
Even the empiricist Hume recognized this fact. See A Treatise of Human
Nature, Part II, Section 1.
66 States as outsiders

and organization. Stigmatization not only made the “outsiders” feel

inferior, but also cut off their access to certain political, economic,
and social privileges in the town. This point bears repeating: far from
corresponding to some kind of inherent, objective cause of relative
inferiority, stigma labels often are themselves enough to generate
inferior conditions, which are then mistaken as a cause. 37
The same dynamic has plagued the modern international system
since its inception. The rise of the West created an objectively mea-
surable power differential, but perhaps more significant38 was the fact
that the states in the Westphalian core of the system had cohesion as
a group39 whereas late-joiners to the international society did not.
Furthermore, unlike in Winston Parva where the inhabitants were
fellow nationals, initially no common culture existed between the
late-joiners and the Westphalian core, which made stigmatization
easier, if not more likely. Despite the fact that non-Western peoples
had their own traditions and cultures, Europeans perceived them as
“anomic”: at best, they were described as “semi-civilized,” but many
were labeled as savages or as barbaric. The perception of anomie is
the flipside of stigma, and vice versa. All undesirable characteristics of
statehood and humanity were projected on the outsider states, just as
was the case in Winston Parva, and as a result of their stigmatization,
these states also came to see themselves as tainted by such character-
istics. This dynamic in turn reinforced the power differential which
had emerged as a consequence of the rise of the West, as described in
Chapter 1.
The causal processes I have been hinting at until this point are
structurally generated and not driven by any one particular actor. For
a stigmatizing “established-outsider” dynamic to emerge in a social
system, there does not have to be a deliberate master plan of oppression
formulated with an eye on the monopolization of resources (although
sometimes there are those as well). In fact, simple un-reflectiveness
is often sufficient, and even if a politically correct awareness about

37
Goffman, Stigma, p. 6; Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders,
p. xxvi.
38
It is telling that the nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization had no
explicit references to measurements of material strength.
39
This is essentially what is meant when it is argued in the English School
literature that the European society of states was a Gemeinschaft society. See
e.g. Buzan, “From International System,” 333.
Stigma in the international system 67

stigma labels were to emerge among some members of the in-group,

the dynamics would persist as long as power relations remained con-
stant. This is because social exclusion is a nearly inevitable side effect
of one’s own quest for autonomy and meaning.40 What is unique
about the modern international system is the fact that these dynamics
have been elevated to the global level and that social hierarchies are
now universal.
In social hierarchies, the resources being monopolized are not really
the ends themselves; often the resources are more meaningful as evi-
dence of one’s worth – just desserts, special identity, autonomy, and
independence. What I have in mind here is Hegel’s discussion of the
master–slave relationship.41 As Hegel pointed out, the self’s inability
to secure certainty of its independent existence through satisfaction
of material desires42 leads it to a struggle for recognition.43 Satisfying
material desires is insufficient evidence of one’s autonomy because
“consumption does not so much master objects as destroy them.”44
By consuming an object, we show that we are more powerful than
the object, though we do get a brief confi rmation of our independ-
ent existence. But as soon as the moment of consumption is over,
we need to consume more, which reminds us of our own corporeal-
ity. Therefore, material objects are not enough to give the conscious
self the validation it seeks: “If an external object is to provide more
than fleeting self-certainty, it must somehow both be negated in its
independence and yet continue to exist … And the only sort of thing
which can ‘abdicat[e]’ its own claims to independence in this way is …
another self-consciousness.”45 In seeking recognition, we want more
than to exist as a physical being: we want our value, our awareness of
ourselves, and to be affi rmed by another.
In other words, the search for recognition is an extension of our
desire for “positive freedom” (or vice versa).46 As Berlin explained it,
“the ‘positive’ sense of the word ‘liberty’ derives from the wish on the
part of the individual to be his own master.”47 This is separate from
the notion of “negative freedom,” which entails simply the freedom

40
See also Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 167.
41
Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit.
42
Ibid., pp. 104–10. 43 Ibid.
44 45
Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 104. Ibid.
46
See also Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable,” 511.
47
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 131.
68 States as outsiders

from interference by others.48 Positive freedom requires not only that

one is free from interference but also that one is a “somebody,” a
“doer,”49 someone who can impose his will on the world, and who is
sovereign in all senses of the word. The difference between negative
and positive understandings of freedom matters more than it appears
at fi rst glance, and I will return to this distinction below.
Because each actor’s goal is to confi rm his own sovereignty (or to
achieve positive freedom for himself), the quest for recognition is
mutually exclusive. Thus the quest for recognition takes the form of
a “life-and-death struggle,”50 which either ends with one party dead
or when one party surrenders. The defeated party confi rms the sov-
ereignty of the victor by recognizing him as the master; he becomes
the slave.
Hegel argued that the master–slave relationship is ultimately unsta-
ble because the master is recognized by someone who is not quite an
agent himself: “What now really confronts him is not an independent
consciousness, but a dependent one. He is, therefore, not certain of
being-for-self as the truth of himself.”51 Such recognition is unfulfi ll-
ing because it comes from someone who is not recognized as an equal
or quite as human.52 Patchen Markell points out that the problem for
Hegel lies in the asymmetry of the recognition relationship,53 an argu-
ment used by recent Hegelian scholarship to recast Hegel both as a
champion of the norm of equal recognition in societies and as a fore-
caster of a future where such an equilibrium will be attained among
diverse groups.54 According to Markell, however, Hegel had a much
more radical point than calling for equal recognition:

[Hegel] suggests that the very desire that animates the struggle for recogni-
tion is impossible to fulfi ll, that the “good” to which it is devoted is not
really what we ought to be after; consequently, the asymmetry and thus
the inadequacy of the relation of master and slave lies in the fact that only

48
The notion of “negative freedom” has a corollary in the discussions of “thin
recognition.” See Wendt, “Why a World State Is Inevitable,” 511.
49
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” pp. 131–2.
50
Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, p. 114; see also Kojève, Introduction,
pp. 7–15.
51
Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, p. 117.
52
See also Kojève, Introduction, p. 19.
53
Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 106.
54
Ibid., p. 92.
Stigma in the international system 69

one of the two parties has acknowledged this, admitted the impossibility of
satisfying its own claims, and conceded its own dependence. 55

Markell argues that despite the inherent instability of the master–

slave relationship, such dynamics can persist for a very long time (or
indefi nitely) because while we can never fully achieve the kind of rec-
ognition we essentially seek, the master status in the master–slave
dynamic creates a very viable approximation of the self-as-it-would-
be-if-it-really-were-positively-free image one desires:

The master–slave relation thus accommodates the contradiction between

dependence and independence by spreading it out over social space, mak-
ing one person bear the disproportionate weight of the fact of human
dependence on the material world … These roles give substance to the
social identities of “master” and “slave” and lend relative stability to the
intersubjective world, making it possible for the master to experience his
own status – like the slave’s – as a reflection of who he always already is,
rather than as the political (and therefore fragile) effect of an ongoing prac-
tice of subordination. 56

In other words, in social figurations where one is recognized as less

than the other, the ongoing interaction continuously creates and
recreates the identities of the parties involved, which are then per-
ceived as reflecting inherent, innate, and fi xed characteristics. The
slave becomes a natural slave;57 the master is the master because he
deserves to be. More importantly, both parties recognize these roles
as such.58
The same dynamic is observed by Elias in the Winston Parva
study: “Just as established groups, as a matter of course, regard their
superior power as a sign of their higher human value, so outsider
groups, as long as the power differential is great and submission
inescapable, emotionally experience their power inferiority as a sign of
human inferiority.”59 Obviously, this is a more satisfying dynamic for
the established group – i.e. “the master” – than it is for the outsiders,

55 56
Ibid., p. 108. Ibid., p. 112.
57
Even a thinker as astute as Aristotle was fooled by this dynamic. Aristotle,
Politics, Book I.
58
Kojève, Introduction, p. 18.
59
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xxvi.
70 States as outsiders

because through this exclusion the members of the established group

get an approximation of fully realized self-sovereignty, of positive lib-
erty, in the form of the superior group image. To be fully sovereign as
a human being, as a consciousness, is to be the master of one’s des-
tiny – it requires the ability to make and impose one’s own rules on
the world, to stand up against and defeat the vagaries of nature and
one’s own appetite.60 From Plato61 to Rousseau,62 positive freedom,
as fully realized agency, has been associated with rationality for this
reason. As Plato recognized early on, it is very difficult to realize this
ideal of positive freedom63.
However, once a relationship dynamic is created, one can feel as if
one has achieved it (or gone a long way in achieving it) in comparison:64
“By refusing to risk his life in a fight for pure prestige, [the Slave] does
not rise above the animals. Hence he considers himself as such, and
as such is he considered by the Master … While the Slave still remains
an ‘immediate,’ natural, ‘bestial’ being, the Master – as a result of
his fight – is already human, ‘mediated.’”65 Yet, at the end of the day,
being a master in the master–slave dynamic does not guarantee sov-
ereignty over things or oneself. Humanity is not attained fully; the
master in this dynamic still struggles to control his animalistic side.
One cannot become positively free in the truest sense by asymmetric
recognition alone; such recognition does not mediate against one’s
inner desires, nor does it fully solve one’s relation to external nature
(although it does mediate against it in the form of the slave’s servitude,
expressed through natural work). So the master recognizes something
is missing from his dominant position – in Kojève’s words, he is at an
“existential impasse.”66 Unfortunately, there is not much the master
can do to transcend this impasse.
It is easier to distinguish oneself from the slave than it is to truly
overcome one’s own animalistic side, easier to project all bestial
qualities onto the slave than it is to eradicate them from one’s own

60
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 132.
61
See e.g. Plato, The Republic, Book IX.
62
See e.g. Rousseau, Social Contract, Book I.
63
Plato, The Republic, Book IV–VII (and he did not believe such mastery
against external nature was possible).
64
Plato is not immune to such trappings either. Plato, The Republic, Book IX.
65
Kojève, Introduction, p. 18.
66
Ibid., p. 19.
Why the emergence of the modern state 71

consciousness or to bring them under the control of one’s reason.

Notice Elias’s observation that the outsiders are characterized as
anomic, untrustworthy, undisciplined, lawless, dirty,67 and having
loose morals.68 In other words, outsiders are perceived as being dom-
inated by the animalistic side of human nature – they are supposed to
be the ones who are ruled by appetite instead of reason, i.e. they are
the ones who are not masters of their own destiny. In comparison,
the existential impasse of the established, of the masters, becomes
tolerable. By projecting all (or most) undesirable attributes as stigma
properties onto the excluded outsider, the established group69 can
create an image of relative sovereignty and simulate possessing a
fuller, superior humanity.70

Why the emergence of the modern state projected

stigmatization onto the international system
The importance of the group dynamic in Elias’s analysis should not
be underestimated. In the Hegelian abstract construct, one self-con-
sciousness meets another – the dynamic is set between two individu-
als.71 However, it is telling that the master–slave figuration is most
frequently employed in the analysis of communal relations, e.g. group
rights. The master–slave relation usually takes group form because
group cohesion allows for ordinary individuals to simulate sover-
eignty without actually risking their lives. Average, or even weak,
individuals get to enjoy recognition as “masters” by sharing in the
group’s charisma.

67
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. 124.
68
Ibid., p. 125.
69
Or “the normals” of Goffman.
70
This is essentially the point Mitchell is making in his discussion of
colonialism:
As with the example of the colonial city, by establishing a boundary that
rigorously excludes the Oriental, the other, from the self, such a self acquires
its apparent cleanliness, its purity, its uncorrupted and undivided identity.
Identity now appears no longer self-divided, no longer contingent, no longer
something arranged out of differences; it appears instead as something self-
formed, and original. (Colonising Egypt, p. 167)
71
Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, pp. 104–10. However, it is worth
noting that Hegel did not intend his analysis to be reductive to the
individual unit.
72 States as outsiders

Berlin also observed that the quest for positive freedom,

for self-sovereignty, tended to become associated with group
efforts: “Presently, the two selves [i.e. the rational and the animalistic]
may be represented by something wider than the individual … as a
social ‘whole’ of which the individual is an element or aspect: a tribe,
a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead
and the yet unborn.”72 Although Berlin does not point directly to this
link, I think a strong case could be made that this fact (or at least its
dominance) is a side effect of modernity.73 On balance, modernity
has helped humanity along in its struggle for negative liberty, but has
made it much more difficult for individuals to attain positive liberty.
There may very well be a trade-off involved between the two under-
standings of freedom.74
The modern view sees the state as Hobbes’s Leviathan, “the mortal
god”75 with no stake in social conflicts, or as the very embodiment of
rationality or pure objectivity in Hegelian terms. While it is appeal-
ing to think of the modern state as a site of reconciliation, to do so is
“to treat the state like a deus ex machina that appears from outside
the social, which – by virtue of its sovereign elevation above the con-
flicts of social life – can serve as a mediating institution.”76 Markell
suggests instead that it is more realistic to think of the state “as one
of the central objects of identification onto which persons displace,
and through which they pursue, the desire for independent and mas-
terful agency.”77 Furthermore, by designating social issues as “non-
political,” political emancipation “disguises their status as forms of
power and makes them more difficult to address politically.”78 The
modern state promises political emancipation through the equal
recognition of citizenship for all, but such recognition entails the

72
Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” p. 132.
73
Berlin indirectly recognizes this in the introduction to the essay: “there has,
perhaps, been no time in modern history when so large a number of human
beings, both in the East and West, have had their notions, and indeed their
lives, so deeply altered, and in some cases violently upset, by fanatically
held social and political doctrines.” Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,”
pp. 118–19.
74
See also Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 69.
75
Hobbes, Leviathan, Introduction.
76
Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 125.
77
Ibid. 78 Ibid., p. 128.
Why the emergence of the modern state 73

danger of entrenching existing social inequalities. Something similar

is at work internationally – the notion of sovereign equality makes it
very difficult to speak of social hierarchies in the international system
as power relations, let alone combat them. Such depoliticization is not
accidental, at either the domestic or the international level: it legiti-
mates the hold on power certain groups have, and allows them to
simulate self-sovereignty by comparison to others in what is supposed
to be a framework of equal recognition.
There is another way that equal recognition undermines the quest
for positive freedom. The modern man living under the rational
Westphalian state is also the faceless, atomized individual, the cal-
culator, and the rational consumer.79 While he gets equal recogni-
tion from the state as accorded to the fellow members in his society,
he gets that recognition not for his essence or even his accomplish-
ments, but rather because he is a part of a large group – the nation
or “the people.” It is the nation as the general will that justifies the
existence of the modern state.80 Within the nation, the “individual”
is one of many, a generic citizen; the distinctions between the “indi-
vidual” and others are completely leveled and discarded as irrelevant
(at least in theory).81 Bauman calls this the state administered univer-
sal identity: “individuals have their self manipulated in order to erase
differences between individuals, according to a planned, managed
and rational set of state actions … The notion of the ‘social’ makes
governmental interventions into the area of the personal appear both
natural and rational.”82 In this manner, the “individual” is created
by the modern nation state and therefore is perpetually bound to the
state in his quest for recognition.83

79
Edmund Burke recognized and bemoaned this fact even before Marx: “the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators
has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever … All the
pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal … are
to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason.” From
Refl ections on the Revolution in France (1790).
80
“Each of us places his person and all his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will … This public person … at present
takes the name republic or body politic, which is called state by its
members.” Rousseau, Social Contract, Book I, chapter 6.
81
“… as one we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.” Ibid.
82
Best, “Review,” 312.
83
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 64: “National states promote
‘nativism’ and construe its subjects as ‘natives’. They laud and enforce the
74 States as outsiders

There is also the fact that the road to equal recognition by the
state and political emancipation ran through the modern realization
that human nature is often and inevitably dominated by base instincts.
Hobbes, who, in many ways, was the first thinker to explicitly reduce
humanity to the desire to survive, was also perhaps the fi rst to advo-
cate a state that stood equidistant to citizens.84 In other words, the
notion of equality requires, in some ways, the reduction of the society
to its lowest common denominator. Whereas positive freedom and self-
sovereignty requires overcoming one’s baser side, negative freedom,
through equal recognition and protection, requires acknowledging it.
As a result, while the emergence of nationalism and the nation state
equalized the distribution of recognition within sovereign borders to a
degree not seen before in history, these developments simultaneously
brought about the loss of other types of “recognition” which were
more conducive to achieving positive freedom.
This is why the very changes welcomed by Hegel as the march of
reason were bemoaned by other observers of modernity – from Burke85
to Tönnies,86 from Tocqueville87 to Nietzsche88 – who did not share
Hegel’s belief that the state could act as a substitute for, let alone
improve upon, the individual quest for positive freedom.89 It is incred-
ibly difficult to find deep meaning in life or to be positively free as the
generic man. Tocqueville, who among the authors mentioned above
was the most observant and also the most tolerant of what was lost in
the transition to the modern age of democracy, was very much aware

ethnic, religious, linguistic, cultural homogeneity. They are engaged in

incessant propaganda of shared attitudes. They preach the sense of common
mission, common fate, common destiny.”
84
Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter XVIII.
85
“On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman;
a woman is but an animal, and animal not of the highest order.” Burke,
Refl ections on the Revolution in France, Paragraph 129.
86
Tönnies, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, pp. 34, 44, 87, 216.
87
“… if the equality of conditions gives some resources to all the members
of the community, it also prevents any of them from having resources of
great extent, which necessarily circumscribes their desires within somewhat
narrow limits. Thus, among democratic nations, ambition is ardent and
continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty; and life is generally spent
in eagerly coveting small objects that are within reach.” Tocqueville,
Democracy in America, vol. II.3, chapter 19.
88
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.
89
Of course, these commentators also disagreed among themselves as to what,
if anything, could, or should, be done to combat these changes.
Why the emergence of the modern state 75

of this fact. He was willing to tolerate the loss of grand ambition, hero-
ism, and genius because he believed this transformation was, on the
one hand, unavoidable and, on the other, not without benefits: “if you
hold it expedient to divert the moral and intellectual activity of man to
the production of comfort and the promotion of general well-being; …
if your object is not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but the habits
of peace; … if such be your desire, then equalize the conditions of men
and establish democratic institutions.”90 In modern political thought,
therefore, the exploration of the possibility of attaining positive, sub-
stantive freedom is either completely ignored or concluded to be within
the purview of the state. Thinkers who are still hopeful about the indi-
vidual attaining full sovereignty, such as Rousseau91 and Hegel,92 end
up arguing that such an outcome is possible only through the state.
This is no accident – the trade-off that accompanies equal recognition
of the mass age is that modern man is much smaller and less powerful
than the best of his predecessors.93 Even Plato believed that how the city
was run would have an effect94 on the chances of an individual to attain
a just soul,95 and he believed this despite his attribution of such chances
mostly to individual nature, as in the accident of birth. Modern think-
ers, having conceded a man’s equality with other men, were even more
bound to see the state as the stage of positive freedom.
To put it another way, with the emergence of the “last man” of egal-
itarian modernity, the hope of attaining positive, substantive freedom
has to either become a group endeavor or be abandoned.96 This hope
is placed either in the nation (the general will) as Rousseau saw it, or in

90
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. II.
91
“… the acquisition in the civil state of moral liberty … alone makes man
truly the master of himself. For to be driven by appetite alone is slavery, and
obedience to the law one has prescribed for oneself is liberty.” Rousseau,
Social Contract, Book I, chapter 8.
92
“… self-consciousness, by virtue of its disposition, has its substantial
freedom in the state as its essence, its end, and the product of activity.”
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Section 3, §257.
93
Nietzsche, who is not satisfied with the solution offered by the state, called
for the “last man” to be replaced by the Ubermensch.
94
Plato, The Republic, Book I.
95
Plato’s defi nition of a just soul is where reason rules over appetite with the
help of the spirit. Plato, The Republic, Book V.
96
Lebow makes a similar argument in Cultural Theory about the link between
modernity, the emergence of the individual, and the search for self-esteem on
the international plane. See e.g. pp. 17–25.
76 States as outsiders

the modern state as Hegel saw it. Equal recognition, which guarantees
negative freedom for all citizens, is insufficient, thin recognition. The
original desire for recognition that sets consciousness on a life-and-
death struggle seeks an affi rmation of the individual’s sovereignty,
autonomy, and self-mastery. The desire for recognition is a craving
for positive freedom, and a society or state which guarantees only
negative freedom, a theoretical, abstract equality, does not quench
the desire for substantive mastery. In fact, abstract egalitarianism and
universalism make it very difficult, if not impossible, for individuals
to attain positive freedom by themselves without the state: whatever
they do, they cannot truly impose their will on the world – the state
has the legitimate monopoly on authoritative force.97
Hence, a modern state that is not explicitly directed toward the
attainment of positive freedom for its society will be unstable, because
the guarantee of negative equality is not enough – human beings want
more than that. They need meaning in their lives; they need a sub-
stantive purpose. A state that does not promise to fulfill that purpose
for its citizens is not a modern state, perhaps not a state at all: it is
neither “actual” nor “rational.” This is why the modern state makes
“progress” its business.98 To say that the state exists to serve its citi-
zens is really to say that the state exists to help men satisfy their urges
for positive freedom: through education, resources, social engineer-
ing, etc.
However, as noted above, the state is not the objective, apolitical
deus ex machina it is imagined to be. Its quest for equal recognition
for all of its citizens often ends up privileging the self-image of
the majority. Markell explains this problem with reference to the
nineteenth-century emancipation of German Jews through their
inclusion as equal citizens:

On the one hand, Jewishness (otherness) must be eradicated, in this case

through a peaceful act of inclusion; on the other hand, in order for the
consequent recognition of the sovereignty of the state to be more than

97
Weber, “Politics as a Vocation.”
98
Even John Stuart Mill, who was more skeptical of state power than most,
recognized that the modern state has something to do with this end – in his
view, the state can promote progress and civilization by staying out of its
citizens’ affairs, and by keeping them out of each other’s social life. See Mill,
On Liberty.
Why the emergence of the modern state 77

momentary and ephemeral, the institutions of the state must maintain a

vigilant surveillance of the Jews to be sure that they are conforming to the
terms of their emancipation – and such a surveillance requires that Jews be
recognizable.99

Each state has its “others,” the presence of which perpetuates the
dynamic described by Markell above, which means that the pro-
ject of sovereignty remains an ongoing affair. Yet the state has to be
legitimated despite its continuous failure to deliver upon its prom-
ise to secure sovereignty. An interim solution to the problem of
legitimation, therefore, is to move the simulation of mastery to the
international domain. However, just as it is difficult for one individ-
ual to achieve real sovereignty, and much easier for him to create a
relationship dynamic with another individual to have the image of
sovereignty mirrored back to him, such is also the case for states and
nations. Therefore, it is no coincidence that in the nineteenth century
the master–slave hierarchy was increasingly projected outside state
borders in Europe – the group struggle for recognition, for positive
freedom, is the essence of the age of nationalism. It is easier (and more
realistic) for states to recreate the “master–slave” figuration within
the international system, and to be recognized as masters of their own
destiny relatively speaking than being objectively so.
In fact, the idea of nationhood (or its more generic version, a soci-
ety which has achieved statehood) is very readily collapsible onto the
master–slave figuration, because the idea that some people deserve
recognition, whereas others do not, is built into the concept.100 As
Bernard Yack points out:

If we raise people’s status by making them formally equal members of a

community, then we are bound to make them somewhat more uncom-
fortable than they used to be with the individuals who stand outside of
that community … A touchy amour propre toward foreigners seems an

99
Markell, Bound by Recognition, p. 146. See also Bauman, Modernity and
Ambivalence, where he points out that the closer German Jews came to
assimilation, the more their Jewishness came into prominence.
100
In fact, as Bauman argues, the nation state “is designed primarily to deal
with the problem of strangers not enemies.” Modernity and Ambivalance,
p. 63. Similar notions are to be found also in Simmel, e.g. in “The Stranger.”
78 States as outsiders

inevitable accompaniment of the way in which nationalism satisfies “ …

desire for status.”101

Yack makes these remarks in his review of Liah Greenfeld’s book

Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, in which Greenfeld argues
that while Anglo-American nationalism is compatible with liberalism
because it respects individuality, ethnic nationalisms – starting with
Germany and Russia – followed a dangerous path because they were
marked with ressentiment against their more advanced neighbors to
the West. Yack rejects Greenfeld’s Anglo-American exceptionalism
and argues that it is more fruitful to think of ressentiment as a feature
of all nationalist formations, civil or ethnic.
Indeed, in making ressentiment a feature exclusively of only “back-
ward,” “ethnic” nationalisms, Greenfeld misreads Nietzsche. When
Nietzsche wrote about ressentiment and “slave morality,” he had in
mind exactly the kind of societies that Greenfeld praises, i.e. lib-
eral, egalitarian, and individualistic. Egalitarianism for Nietzsche is
born out of ressentiment. The democratic man, “the last man,” is the
product of ressentiment. Modernity is dominated by slave morality.
The “slave” in Nietzsche’s argument is unable to achieve greatness
on his own, and he resents those who can. He is not free in the posi-
tive sense, so he rejects positive freedom:

While all noble morality grows out of a triumphant affi rmation of one’s
own self, slave morality from the start says “No” to what is “outside,”
“other,” to “a not itself.” And this “No” is its creative act. This trans-
formation of the glance which confers value – this necessary projection
towards what is outer instead of back onto itself – that is inherent in ressen-
timent. In order to arise, slave morality always requires fi rst an opposing
world, a world outside itself.102

In other words, the very act of creating an “Other” against which one
defines oneself implies ressentiment. It is not only those at the losing end
of comparison who are in thrall to this state, but anyone who is deriving
self-knowledge from the comparative act. The positively free man does
not need the negative category of the “Other” to know himself.103
101
Yack, “Review,” 178.
102
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.
103
In other words, the “master” in the Hegelian dialectic and the “noble man”
of Nietzsche are not the same person. Nietzsche’s nobleman does not need
the recognition of the “other” to achieve self-sovereignty.
Why the emergence of the modern state 79

The mediocre man, on the other hand, unable to achieve positive

freedom, compensates for his lack of sovereignty by substituting his
own “weak” morality for what is “good.” The mediocre man feels
“good” in his righteousness – his power comes from the fact that the
world recognizes his normative framework, and not from any objec-
tive achievement of positive freedom. This new morality, according
to Nietzsche, allows for the mediocre man to feel superior without
being truly superior. Bauman quotes Sander Gilman who “wrote of
the ‘conservative curse’ which hangs over the liberal project: ‘The
more you are like me, the more I know the true value of my power,
which you wish to share, and the more I am aware that you are but
a shoddy counterfeit, an outsider.’”104 It is the relative superiority of
“good” over “evil” which allows the mediocre man to get recognized
as if he were “noble”:

It’s not a matter of fear. Rather it’s the fact that we have nothing more
to fear from man, that the maggot “man” is in the foreground swarm-
ing around, that the “tame man,” the hopelessly mediocre and unpleasant
man, has already learned to feel that he is the goal, the pinnacle, the mean-
ing of history, “the higher man,” – yes indeed, that he even has a certain
right to feel that about himself, insofar as he feels separate from the excess
of failed, sick, tired, spent people, who are nowadays beginning to make
Europe stink, so that he feels at least relatively successful, at least still capa-
ble of life, of at least saying “Yes” to life.105

In other words, the normative standards of modernity allow for aver-

age members of modern societies to feel as if they are the pinnacles of
history, as masters of their own destiny in comparison to those who
do not live up to those standards.
By discussing Nietzsche in this manner, my goal is not to insinuate
that the West suffers from a “slave morality” whereas the East is full
of noble, great men who are being oppressed. Rather, I have invoked
Nietzsche because of his observation that there is a dark side to the
rhetoric of equal citizenship that pervades modern society. This is not
to deny that there is an empowering aspect to the liberal values of equal
recognition: “The message amounts to a standing invitation to all and

104
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71; Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred,
p. 2.
105
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, First Essay.
80 States as outsiders

everybody to take their fate in their own hands and make it as good as
they can.”106 However, too often we focus on this promise and ignore
what happens in practice, which is the manifestation of an inner con-
tradiction in liberalism/egalitarianism/thin recognition: “to deform
the problem of ‘de-estrangement’ … as the question of decency and
industry of the stranger’s effort at assimilation-through-acculturation,
is to reaffi rm the inferiority, undesirability and out-of-placeness of the
stranger’s form of life.”107 In other words, equal recognition within the
modern state itself can be used to create a social hierarchy, by allow-
ing mediocre members of society to feel a sense of smugness, a sense
of superiority in comparison to the stigmatized foreigners outside and
strangers nearby.108 The privileges offered by the modern state end up
serving a function beyond whatever substantive value they offer to the
citizen; they become the foundation for another comparative rubric
that enables the citizen to simulate mastery, relatively speaking. This
is more so the case for the members of the titular nation (if there is
one) which controls the state, because their affi liation with the state
is the most direct and unproblematic. They easily derive ontological
security benefits from the recognition of the state, domestically and
internationally. Inter-societal routines help the members of society to
maintain identity coherence vis-à-vis others.109
However, it is not only the members of the titular nation, the class
which dominates the state or the “normals” in the domestic society,
who derive identity affi rmation from their state’s international stand-
ing. In fact, often the state’s simulated mastery of the world vis-à-vis
other states and groups in international society is the only cushion of
legitimacy it can offer the lowest members of its citizenry. The right
of citizenship, beyond whatever degree of negative freedom it offers
the individual, becomes a normative good in the service of satisfying
the individual’s craving for positive freedom, for the simulation of
positive recognition, precisely because it is not offered to others. Such
others (non-citizens) can then be seen as something less than human,

106
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 69.
107
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71
108
This is not to say that the entirety of the modern project of ordering and
comparing is a sham masking ressentiment. However, it is also undeniable
but a rather neglected aspect of modernity that the seemingly objective tool
of scientific method has been used in this rather subjective manner.
109
Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 352.
Why the emergence of the modern state 81

less than people, making one feel more sovereign in comparison, how-
ever lowly one’s standing may be in domestic society.
To sum up thus far, modern statehood creates its own paradox.
The universal citizenship and equal recognition the state offers all
members of the nation promises negative freedom for all, but makes
the attainment of positive freedom through individual effort increas-
ingly difficult.110 By guaranteeing that no citizen of the state will be
legally recognized as superior to another citizen, it closes one ancient
avenue111 for the expression (or simulation) of positive freedom: mas-
tery over one’s environment, including members of one’s society. By
distributing formal recognition equally, the modern state in a way
demands that if one is to rise, all are to rise with him, and if all can-
not rise, neither can the individual. This makes sovereign recognition
much more of a group issue than it was in the past. And in separating
the “nation” from foreigners, and in positing that the members of the
nation uniquely deserve recognition, the modern state offers a quick
fi x for a group that demands positive recognition as masters of their
own destiny.112
The modern state is supposed to achieve positive freedom for all of
its citizens. But the goal of positive freedom for all is incredibly dif-
ficult to attain in absolute terms, and in any case it is a goal with a
long-term horizon. Simulating its attainment in relative terms is eas-
ier and immediately available, because the modern state already has
an irrational discriminating mechanism against foreigners, who are,
by defi nition, less deserving of recognition. In exercising this mech-
anism, the modern state actually embodies a principle that contra-
dicts its rationality, but while doing so creates the impression that it
is closer to achieving positive freedom, which is the very embodiment
of rationality. In this way, the modern state, the very thing that made
positive recognition primarily a group endeavor, comes to be seen as
the embodiment of humanity, rationality, and sovereignty, of positive
freedom, precisely when it is not.

110
See e.g. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. II.2, chapter 8.
111
Other avenues remain: for instance, economic success or political
engagement. Nevertheless, this is a loss, and the fact that it was a loss was
observed by many nineteenth-century political thinkers, as was discussed
above.
112
This is not unlike Hegel’s argument that confl ict among states can unite
subjectivity and objectivity. Hegel, “German Constitution,” pp. 15–20.
82 States as outsiders

However, while the citizen–foreigner distinction goes some way in

satisfying demands for positive recognition, it is not enough by itself
because the mastery can be simulated only if the “slave” is also a
party to the recognition dynamic. In other words, a world where each
party defi nes the other simply as a foreigner does not satisfy the group
ideal for positive freedom. For such demands to be met at a satisfac-
tory level, the foreigner also has to recognize himself as somehow less
deserving of recognition, as something less than human.
This is achieved in an international context the same way as it was
in Winston Parva: “One group can effectively stigmatize another only
as long as it is well established in positions of power from which the
stigmatized group is excluded. As long as that is the case, the stigma of
collective disgrace attached to the outsiders can be made to stick.”113
At a certain level of abstraction, there is not much of a difference
between the dynamics sustained by the “old village” in Winston Parva
and those perpetuated by the European society of states in the inter-
national system in the nineteenth century. The developments ushering
in modernity also gave birth to the concept of “civilization” or the
“civilized world.” In other words, the group dynamic necessary for the
simulation of mastery was thus carried onto the international stage.

Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage

The established-outsider dynamic did not disappear when the
nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization was abandoned in the
twentieth century. In one form or another, it has persisted. However,
it is worth noting that the trend, at least formally, is from exclusivity
toward increasing inclusivity and pluralism.
This can be explained by reference to two factors. First, modernity
is an ontology based in rationality, and as such there is an inher-
ent pull toward an objective, universal language of modern norms.114
In other words, normative criteria for the evaluation of actors come
to be expressed in increasingly individualist, rationalist, merit-based
terms.115 This is true in both domestic and international society.

113
Elias and Scotson, Established and Outsiders, p. xx.
114
The World Polity school in sociology offers the most comprehensive studies
of this trend.
115
Once again, Hegel may be cited for support – but this is a trend noted by all
observers of modernity.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 83

However, sociologists have long observed that “the long run tendency
for collectivist criteria of exclusion to be replaced by individualist cri-
teria represents a modification of the legal and political foundation of
exploitation rather than its elimination.”116 This relates directly to the
second underlying cause of this trend.
As noted above, the more asymmetrical the recognition relationship,
the less satisfying it is for the dominant group. If the “slave” is merely
a “thing,” the slave’s recognition does not offer much to the “master.”
This is why it is sometimes argued that only relationships of equal rec-
ognition can be stable in the long run;117 but another way to think about
it is that the dominant groups have some incentive to grant recognition
to inferior groups if they can, at the same time, maintain their position
of power. I have pointed out above that formal recognition of equality
has a tendency to create precisely that dynamic: equal citizenship or the
principle of sovereign equality leaves entrenched social hierarchies in
place while de-politicizing them. Therefore, it is not surprising that the
normative trend internationally has been in the same direction as it was
domestically: formal equality is granted because it is always accompa-
nied by the relegation of social struggles out of the political sphere.118
This is not to discount entirely the substantive gains that accompany the
granting of such rights as sovereign equality – formal rights, for what-
ever reason they are established, have an empowering effect as well. My
point simply is that the story does not end with formal recognition.
This trend toward inclusivity was becoming evident by the end of
the nineteenth century, during which time the Standard of Civilization
became increasingly secularized and de-Europeanized.119 Japan and
the South American states embraced the Standard of Civilization, and
civilized states came to be defi ned as “those entities that accorded
basic rights to their citizens and aliens, boasted an organized bureauc-
racy, adhered to international law and possessed capacity to enter
into diplomatic relations.”120 The developments during World War I,

116
Murphy, “Weberian Closure,” 25.
117
See e.g. Wendt, “Why a World State is Inevitable.”
118
As Kingsbury notes in “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 84, “it is all too
evident that the high twentieth-century commitment to virtually universal
formal equality of states in the sovereignty model has not resolved many of
the underlying problems.”
119
Simpson, Great Powers, pp. 256–7.
120
Ibid., p. 256. See also Gong, Standard of “Civilisation”, pp. 14, 24.
84 States as outsiders

however, threw the civilized status of Germany and Russia into ques-
tion, raising doubts about using Christianity as implicit shorthand
for civilization.121 In the meantime, the break-up of agrarian empires
in Eastern Europe forced the Western powers to articulate a more
inclusive framework for deciding which groups were entitled to self-
determination.122

The interwar period: the West vs. Zealots and Herodians

Arnold Toynbee’s123 works about Greece and Turkey are quite illumi-
nating in terms of the prevailing mindset of this period vis-à-vis out-
sider states that had recently joined the international society. In The
Western Question in Greece and Turkey (1923), Toynbee argues that
the Turks are unfairly stigmatized, whereas the Greeks are unfairly
spoiled:

When you have made a spoilt-child of the Greek, it is no good rounding on

him as an impostor; and when you have used the Turk as a whipping boy,
you do not heal the stripes that you have infl icted by congratulating him
on his fortitude … In both cases, the evil that we have done them exceeds,
and will probably outlive, the good.124

On the one hand, Toynbee is critical of his Western counterparts’

prejudicial attitudes toward non-Western states, observing that “the
non-Western societies are oppressed by our chilly shadow, while we
are resentful when they assert their individuality. This is partly what
arouses our animus against the Turks and the Russians.”125 Yet at

121
Simpson, Great Powers, p. 237:
At fi rst, Christianity was the test of “good breeding”. Wheaton’s Elements
of International Law, published in 1836 and translated into Chinese in
1864, characterised international law as Christian, civilised and European
and marked out the standard to which Asian empires had to aspire if they
were to be admitted to the international legal community. Later civilisation
became the key term.
122
Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 2.
123
Both Fukuyama and Huntington count Toynbee among the few who shaped
early-twentieth-century thought about world affairs (along with Spengler,
Pareto, and Sorokin).
124
Toynbee, Western Question, p. 348.
125
Ibid., p. 362.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 85

the same time, even Toynbee cannot avoid a degree of paternalism

toward the subjects of his study.
Toynbee provides compelling evidence for the argument I am
advancing here: that the Western core of the international society
in effect stigmatized outsider states. In fact, just four years after he
lauded the Turks for having authentic souls and characters in compar-
ison to the Greeks who were trying to pass themselves off according
to the expectations in Europe,126 Toynbee wrote a book devoted solely
to Turkey, where he praised Turkish efforts for adapting to Western
civilization: “Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that everything in
contemporary Turkey which has life in itself or interest for a foreign
observer can be traced back to some Western stimulus and will be
found to be a reaction against Western influence when not an emana-
tion from it.”127 He concluded by remarking that Turkey is a forerun-
ner of changes to come in the rest of the world because the issues
facing Turkey are confronted by all Eastern peoples: “Everywhere
these peoples stand at the parting of the ways, with the choice of
entering the camp of the Zealots or the camp of the Herodians. They
can no longer remain neutral; for the West, in its restless activity,
will not let them alone.”128 What Toynbee recognized here was the
fact that by the end of World War I, the future for Eastern peoples
had been reduced to two options: embrace the Western normative
standards, or reject them entirely; the same options available to a
stigmatized individual in domestic society (attempt to survive among
normals or retire to one’s own community). Rejection is not at all the
same thing as aloofness.
Furthermore, by the interwar years, it had become rather com-
monplace to assume that there was one and only one trajectory for
civilization. Or rather, the main change from nineteenth-century
assumptions, which espoused the same general idea, was that non-
Christian or non-European peoples129 could, theoretically, join the

126
It could be argued that the Greeks at this time were engaged in a different
form of stigma-response; in order not to be treated as outsiders, they were
passing as the idealized heirs of Plato and Aristotle. Toynbee describes the
disappointment of Westerners in fi nding out that the reality on the ground
did not match the image.
127 128
Toynbee, Turkey, p. 3. Ibid., p. 300.
129
For instance, Gong notes that “the 1928 fourth edition of International
Law still records that some non-European countries were ‘certainly civilized
states … however, their civilization had not yet reached that condition
86 States as outsiders

civilized world,130 though this had to be done by progressing through

certain fi xed stages. This notion is clearly expressed in the League of
Nations mandate system,131 which had replaced the categories of the
Standard of Civilization with more progressive, temporal language.132
In the discussions about the mandate system from this period, there
is an almost evangelical tone that replicated (rather than replaced) the
imperialist attitudes of the nineteenth century. In fact, a number of
commentators compare the League to the British Empire, and found
hope for its success in that fact. Here is but one example from 1930:

In the last ten years, and largely as a result of the World War and the part
played by the British Empire in the World War, we have found this solution

which was necessary to enable their Governments and their population in

every respect to understand, and carry out, the rules of International Law.’”
Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 83.
130
To contemporary eyes, the change seems minor. However, when we recall
that it was only in 1860 that Asa Gray wrote the following in his review of
Darwin’s Evolution of the Species, the modification of the early twentieth
century seems almost revolutionary:
The prospect of the future, accordingly, is on the whole pleasant and
encouraging. It is only the backward glance, the gaze up the long vista of the
past, that reveals anything alarming. Here the lines converge as they recede
into the geological ages, and point to conclusions which, upon the theory,
are inevitable, but by no means welcome. The very fi rst step backwards
makes the Negro and the Hottentot our blood-relations; – not that reason
or Scripture objects to that, though pride may. (italic added)
131
See, for instance, Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations:
Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish empire have reached
a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be
provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice
and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand
alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in
the selection of the Mandatory.
Other peoples, especially those of Central Africa, are at such a stage that
the Mandatory must be responsible for the administration of the territory
under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience and religion,
subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition
of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic and the liquor traffic, and
the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval
bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes
and the defense of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the
trade and commerce of other Members of the League. (Italics added)
132
Watson perhaps overstates this fact in Evolution of International Society,
p. 284.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 87

which was absent in the eighteenth century. We found it, and if we are
wise people we shall go into the future with this talisman of what is called
Dominion status, and we shall keep one-fourth of the human race together
in perpetual peace and friendship, pursuing ideals of liberty and progress,
and helping in building up a new world. Is not that something? Oppressed
by the weight of these ideas, men’s characters and minds develop slowly.
Growth is arrested and social conditions become static. Hence the fact
that Asia, the home of civilisation, is also a place where civilisation has
scarcely advanced for thousands of years, and has now begun to move only
in response to an impulse received from Europe.133

As exemplified by this passage, the dichotomies of this period hardly

need restating: East was static, despotic, and had not moved for thou-
sands of years, whereas the West was dynamic, progressive, modern,
and the pinnacle of civilization. The only way out of backwardness
was to emulate the West, to advance through the same stages the
West had already gone through. The East was only now coming to
this profound realization, thanks to the impetus from the West. The
Soviet model was hardly an alternative to this recipe: “Leninism,
which posed itself as the radical opponent of Wilsonianism, was in
fact its avatar … The construction of socialism was economic devel-
opment of the Third World clothed in more radical verbiage.”134 Both
the right-wing and left-wing ideologies of this time were teleological,
and therefore hierarchical.

After World War II: modernity and economic development

By the time World War II had come and gone, the emphasis of interna-
tional norms had shifted135 to the economic sector.136 This was a culmi-
nation of certain trends that had their roots in nineteenth-century social
thought.137 In a 1966 article, authors Nettl and Robertson observe that

133
Smuts, “British Empire,” 144.
134
Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 2.
135
Gong notes that “the holocausts of the Second World War and the threat
of nuclear destruction further changed the meaning of ‘civilized’ and
‘uncivilized.’” Standard of “Civilisation”, p. 87.
136
See e.g. Mitchell, Rule of Experts, p. 4.
137
In more ways than one: Watson argues that even though the post-World War
II international society was dominated by the United States and Russia, two
actors “outside the original Europe,” “they and their allies agreed that the
88 States as outsiders

even though analyses of change were anchored in the notion of progress

since the earliest periods of industrialization in the West, it was “not until
Marx that an attempt was made to create a formal synthesis between
industrialization and social change in one coherent process.”138 Before
Marx, the emphasis in analyses of economic change was very much on
the prominent role and autonomy of the individual: “There was in fact
very little specific social analysis – and even less general recognition –
of any conception of industrializing societies.”139 Nineteenth-century
thought brought an impressive array of thinkers – from Hegel to Marx
to Durkheim to Weber – who mounted serious challenges to reduction-
ist analyses of society. It was probably no accident that the individualist
analyses of social change tended to emanate from England, where the
state had played a less explicit role in capitalist development, whereas
the emphasis on structural analysis had a definite German accent.140 In
later industrializing countries such as Prussia, the role the state would
have to play in attaining “positive freedom” had become rather obvious
by the nineteenth century.141
However, among the nineteenth-century thinkers who challenged
individualist notions of progress, Marx stood alone in placing eco-
nomics and materialism front and center in his analysis of social
history. Furthermore, the second half of the nineteenth century was
also marked by the increasing fragmentation of social sciences. As
a result, initially Marx’s materialist explanation for all social phe-
nomena did not make many inroads outside of his ideological follow-
ing.142 Therefore, it was not until the Great Depression that economics

rules and practices of the previous period should remain provisionally in

force with minor changes.” Evolution of International Society, p. 289.
138
Nettl and Robertson, “Industrialization, Development and
Modernization,” 275.
139
Ibid.
140
See Lebow’s discussion of Heeren, Clausewitz, Ranke, and Treitschke and
their views on the state in Cultural Theory, p. 10.
141
There was an economic angle to this as well. As Stavrianos notes, the Second
Industrial Revolution all but eliminated small family businesses. The capital
investment needed for most modern plants was so huge that it was beyond the
means of most individual investors – this is why the state became the primary
vehicle for industrialization in most of the globe from this point onward.
British capitalists were spared this necessity to some degree thanks to the
cartels operating on accrued capital from the First Industrial Revolution and
the profits generated overseas. See Stavrianos, Global Rift, p. 258.
142
Nettl and Robertson, “Industrialization, Development and
Modernization,” 276.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 89

grabbed the mantle of dominance among the social sciences, and “by
the time of World War II, the primacy of economics was fi rmly estab-
lished both in terms of policy formation and in the great influx of
economists into positions of power and influence.”143 This influence
became critical after the end of World War II, when every problem
facing those countries ravaged by war and the newly independent
colonies seemed to have an economic answer. The dominance of the
economic field was also reflected in the newly created United Nations,
which defi ned its agenda mostly around the new problem of “under-
development.” As Nettl and Robertson observe:

Thus, far from regarding the post-war aspirations for economic develop-
ment as a natural consequence of a given situation, they can be seen as
the consequence of externally generated inducements of a rather special
kind, which were framed and channeled in particular directions for rea-
sons which did not necessarily have very much to do with the felt needs
or value systems of the deprived societies. (A clear distinction has here to
be drawn between the autonomously generated idea or value of indepen-
dence – and its obverse, imperialism – and the induced one of underdevel-
opment or atimia). This leads directly to the notion of the existence of an
international system of stratification, with its own and currently somewhat
indeterminate value system … 144

In other words, while the focus of normative standards shifted to

economics, social stratification remained a fact of the system. In the
passage above, Nettl and Robertson draw our attention to the fact
that “underdevelopment” is a socially generated category that did not
exist prior to World War II. As we saw above, before World War
II, the same “underdeveloped” countries were described as being at
lower stages of the civilization trajectory. Before that, in the nine-
teenth century, the same countries were considered frozen in time as
“barbaric” or as “semi-civilized” entities.
The dominance of economics in stigma standards post-World
War II had the consequences predicted above. On the one hand,
because the focus on economic development implied a more “objec-
tive” metric, post-World War II restructuring of international society
turned out to be more inclusive – even prior enemies such as Germany

143 144
Ibid. Ibid., 277.
90 States as outsiders

and Japan, and illiberal states such as Spain and Argentina, were
retained in the fold despite initial protestations by some circles dur-
ing the San Francisco negotiations.145 As Ian Clark points out, the
postwar order was intended as “a form of social and economic ‘pro-
tection’ for the bloc of Western states that found itself exposed to
the vagaries and inconveniences of the increasingly open political
‘market’ of the global state system.”146 Furthermore, the economic
emphasis on “development” helped make the decolonization process
relatively painless,147 as it gave “‘national liberation movements’ …
hope for the future.”148
On the other hand, however, the new objective, economic rubric
carried strong echoes of the older value systems.149 While discussions
of “civilization” were now mostly passé, the “modernization the-
ory” behind the concept of “development” and “underdevelopment”
also held that there were certain stages a country had to progress
through.150 The emphasis on development instead of civilization did
give lower-ranking (outsider) countries something more concrete to
work with in theory, but like the idea of civilization, the concept of
modern development was also abstracted entirely from the Western
experience. Francis Fukuyama remarks that modernization the-
ory can be thought of as the last product of the nineteenth-century
universal history tradition because it posited that “industrial devel-
opment followed a coherent pattern of growth, and would in time
produce certain uniform social and political structures across dif-
ferent countries and cultures.”151 The implication was that “only the
West’s political development represents a valid model.”152 Even Samuel
Huntington, hardly the poster child for sensitivity about social strati-
fication, observed that modernization theory was an old tale in new
disguise: “These categories were, of course, the latest manifestation

145
Simpson, Great Powers, pp. 264–8.
146
Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.
147
As Blaney and Inayatullah rightly point out, “it is important to remember
that modernization theory develops as a postcolonial theory – in part
a response to the emergence of newly independent states.” Problem of
Difference, p. 96.
148
Simpson, Great Powers, p. 268.
149
See also Dallmayr, Beyond Orientalism, pp. 149–50.
150
See e.g. Huntington, “Political Modernization”; Tipps, “Modernization
Theory.”
151
Fukuyama, End of History, p. 68. 152 Ibid.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 91

of a Great Dichotomy between more primitive and more advanced

societies which has been a common feature of Western social thought
for the past one hundred years.”153 The modernization framework
of developmental stages is best described as a stigma theory because
these views were underlined by the assumption that “development”
was an individual state problem and not a systemic issue.
In fact, despite the dominant emphasis on economics, the con-
cepts of modernity/backwardness and/or development/underdevelop-
ment were used as catch-all categories for all sorts of shortcomings
attributed to “outsider” states. Backward/agricultural societies were
supposed to be marked by differential stratification, simple occupa-
tion roles, ascriptive norm patterns, and limited mobility; whereas
modern/industrial societies were characterized by egalitarianism,
complex occupations, universal norms, and high social mobility.154
The view from the Soviet Bloc was no different. Wallerstein points
out that Stalin’s stages of development could easily be substituted for
Rostow’s and that “Stalinist bureaucrats and Western experts com-
peted for which one could be the most efficacious Saint-Simonian.”155
As Huntington notes, the common belief among modernization theo-
rists was that “the essential difference between modern and tradi-
tional society … lies in the greater control which modern man has
over his natural and social environment,”156 and the Marxist model
shared the same belief. Therefore, it is not hard to see how postwar
international norms once again reproduced the simulation of sover-
eignty by attributing to the “outsider” states a lack of control over the
natural environments that they had to overcome. In comparison, the
“established” states seemed positively in control of their own fates.

After the Cold War: governance

Most scholars date the next normative shift in the international sys-
tem to the end of the Cold War, but it can be argued that the devel-
opments of the 1970s and 1980s also had something to do with the
displacement of economics from the limelight. By the 1970s, it was

153
Huntington, “The Change,” 285.
154
Ibid., 286. Huntington is discussing the modernization theories of Parsons,
Shils, and Sutton here.
155
Wallerstein, “Development of the Concept of Development,” 111.
156
Huntington, “The Change,” 286.
92 States as outsiders

becoming obvious that “development” for the “Third World” could

not follow the prescribed stages of progress. As a result, both the
Dependency School and Wallerstein’s World-System theory chal-
lenged modernization theory. However, both of these approaches
still emphasized economic factors above all else. In the meantime, the
economic dominance of the “established” countries was challenged
through efforts such as the call for a “New International Economic
Order.”157 While ultimately unsuccessful, these calls did indicate a
growing skepticism of the dominant international stigma theory of
developmental stages.
The oil crises and the subsequent collapse of the economies of
many “developing” countries in the 1980s also contributed to the
general malaise about economic solutions to international inequal-
ity. However, in the 1980s, this disillusionment was tempered (or
delayed) by the heavily promoted prescription from the “core” that
the North–South problem was one rooted in economic approach and
not in any structural power disparity. The forced neoliberal lessons158
from the relative success of East Asian economies were also aided, at
least temporarily, by the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The End of
History” as proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama was supposed to mean
that state-centered approaches to development were discredited once
and for all.
Democratic governance159 became the normative buzzword of the
1990s. The shift described above from “developmental” stages to
neoliberal economic approaches as the proposed solution to economic
disparity helped along a normative return to socio-political/cultural
litmus tests. Some observers contended that, as a result, “the East–
West divide with its two superpowers has been replaced by a division
between North and South,”160 but the obituary for the East–West
divide was also premature. It is much more reasonable to argue that
the bifurcated division of previous periods has been replaced by one
single, global social hierarchy, in which the Western core dominates
according to all normative metrics.

157
See e.g. Bhagwati, New International Economic Order; Cox, “Ideologies
and the NIEO.”
158
Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’.”
159
Simpson, Great Powers, p. 281.
160
Castles, “Nation and Empire,” 203.
Established-outsider dynamic on the international stage 93

Ian Clark argues that the period after the Cold War did not usher in
any new substantive principles and that it is better understood “as an
important stage in the advancement of this ‘double movement’ towards
a more overtly normative style of international society, as defi ned by
the core states within it.”161 He sees the legitimizing principles of
the post-Cold War order as a “revised” Standard of Civilization.162
These legitimizing principles were: “principles of multilateralism and
a commitment to a global economy; a collectivization of security; and
adherence to a set of liberal rights values.”163 Thus construed, this
new Standard of Civilization helped integrate the former communist
countries of Eastern Europe to the core of international society.
Clark is not the only author to recognize that international hier-
archies persist in the post-Cold War system in new guises. Goldgeier
and McFaul argue that the new international order can be analyzed
as the “tale of two worlds.” In their story, the core is secure, wealthy,
and democratic, whereas the periphery is dependent, unpredictable,164
and conflict-prone.165 Wallerstein also observes166 similar trends and
predicts further polarization between the core and the periphery.167
Blaney and Inayatullah argue that “the landscape of world politics”
in the post-Cold War era is best understood “in terms of a binary that
recycles the content of modernization theory into a new, international
form: between a zone of peace, democracy and a separate zone of anar-
chy, turmoil, authoritarianism, and (optimistically) development.”168
This binary perpetuates the same social divisions of the past, with
“the cultural conceptions of Western liberals … constructed as nor-
mal or natural in relation to today’s ‘barbarians.’”169

161
Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.
162
See also Kingsbury, “Sovereignty and Inequality,” p. 90.
163
Clark, “Another ‘Double Movement’,” p. 238.
164
Goldgeier and McFaul, “Tale of Two Worlds,” 469.
165
Iver Neumann criticizes a book by Holm and Sorensen in the same vein for
distinguishing between “zones of peace” versus “zones of confl ict”: “There
is a teleological quality to this categorization that betrays the main idea
that, although premodern, modern, and postmodern states can coexist,
these are also developmental stages.” See “Review,” 351.
166
Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 5.
167
Also see Hurrell and Woods, Inequality, p. 1.
168
Blaney and Inayatullah, Problem of Difference, p. 116, citing Singer and
Wildavsky, Real World Order, pp. 1–3, and Russett, Controlling the Sword,
p. 120.
169
Ibid., p. 117.
94 States as outsiders

To sum up, a specific normative framework marks each major

period in the history of the international system. These normative
frameworks point to several things. First of all, they are indicators
of an asymmetric power dynamic between countries similar to that
observed by Elias in Winston Parva; namely countries that we may
call “the established” (the core) and countries that we may call “the
outsiders” (the semi-periphery and the periphery). The normative
frameworks always represent values that are abstracted from the
existing attributes of “the established,” but at the same time repre-
sent an idealization of those qualities. In other words, by holding
the outsiders to an ideal standard and thereby guaranteeing that
they will fall short, the established feel secure in their approxima-
tion of the desirable attributes. For instance, irregularities in elec-
tion processes in the periphery are perceived to be a much more
serious problem compared to similar incidents in Western democra-
cies. A similar distortion happens in regard to security issues – the
current perception in the West is that peripheral regions are more
vulnerable to terrorist violence.170 Terrorist attacks of any scale out-
side the core set off a frenzy of canceled tourist reservations for
many months ahead, whereas hardly anyone thinks twice of pass-
ing through New York City or London weeks after major terrorist
incidents.171
The same stigmatizing result is also achieved by projecting all
unwanted, but somewhat desirable or intriguing, characteristics on
the outsider states. Such an attitude was especially evident in the
nineteenth-century standards of civilization. The East was supposed
to be static, despotic, and uncivilized, but also decadent and libidi-
nous. However, a version of this attitude has made a comeback along
with the rise of multicultural trends in the West. The Western tourist
of the present day holds locals outside the core responsible for satisfy-
ing her in her search for “authenticity” and comes away disappointed
any time she encounters “imitations” of Western comforts, as if not
being Eastern/Southern enough was a moral failing on the part of
the locals. At any given point in time, then, there are international

170
See Bankoff, “Regions of Risk.”
171
In fact, in most public recounts of major terrorist attacks since 9/11, attacks
in places such as Jordan and Indonesia are left off the list, as if the terrorist
attacks there were not as extraordinary as events in London or Madrid.
How stigma labels shape behavior 95

anti-norms, which once affi xed to the description of a country, dis-

play the properties of stigma labels. In the next section, I will discuss
how the presence of such stigma labels associated with outsider status
affect the behavior of states.

How stigma labels shape behavior

Possessing attributes that could be stigmatized has several conse-
quences for any actor. First, normals perceive the stigmatized actor
as something less than human. Because he is perceived as such, he
is subjected to “varieties of discrimination ,” which “reduce his life-
chances.”172 Second, as Goffman argues, in such situations, the dis-
criminating behavior is often backed by a “stigma-theory,” which
is an ideology constructed by the normals “to explain … inferiority
and account for the danger [the stigmatized agent] represents, some-
times rationalizing an animosity based on other differences.”173 As
discussed above, other imperfections are imputed to the individ-
ual with stigma, and sometimes such imperfections may have the
characteristic of “desirable but undesired attributes.”174 If the stig-
matized person becomes defensive about his stigma, his response
is usually understood as a “direct expression of his defect” and
“hence a justification of the way we treat him.”175 In other words,
the stigmatized individual is caught in a bind. To challenge the
stigma only reinforces his association with it; on the other hand, to
not challenge it amounts to embracing that association.
This situation creates an existential dilemma for the stigmatized
actor because he himself is not free of the standards being used to
judge him. As a member of the society that stigmatizes him, he is

intimately alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him,
if only for moments, to agree that he does indeed fall short of what
he really ought to be … Shame becomes a central possibility, arising
from the individual’s perception of one of his own attributes as being
a defi ling thing to possess, and one he can readily see himself as not
possessing.176

172
Goffman, Stigma, p. 5. 173 Ibid. 174
Ibid.
175
Ibid., p. 6. 176 Ibid., p. 7.
96 States as outsiders

To put it another way, an actor who has internalized the normative

standards of the society he is a member of cannot escape stigmatiza-
tion even if he isolates himself or rejects those standards as unfair.
Once he has internalized these standards, the subsequent choices of
isolation or rejection are as much a response to the stigma as embrac-
ing the stigma would be.
Therefore, once internalization has occurred – in individuals
this usually happens through childhood socialization – the stigma
becomes the driving force of the agent’s behavior. As Goffman points
out, the central feature of the stigmatized agent’s situation in life is a
question of “acceptance”: “Those who have dealings with him fail to
accord him the respect and regard which the uncontaminated aspects
of his social identity have led them to anticipate extending, and have
led him to anticipate receiving; he echoes this denial by fi nding that
some of his own attributes warrant it.”177 In other words, the stigma-
tized agent deals with two kinds of “acceptance” issues: one that he
requires from the wider society and the other that he requires from
himself. The two are intimately related, however; without equal rec-
ognition from the wider society he may not be able to accept himself,
and without accepting himself, he may be forced to live the dissonant
life of the “discreditable.”178
Once a stigma is internalized, there is no escape from it; all subse-
quent actions are a product of this original condition. A stigmatized
state, much like the stigmatized individual, faces additional social
constraints, such as a decrease in social stature and an uncertain
ontological environment. Its subsequent strategies are, therefore, best
understood as mechanisms for coping with such social constraints.
The two most realistic choices for a stigmatized actor are either to
attempt normalcy or to embrace one’s stigma. Within each choice,
there are also two alternatives. Normalcy can be attempted by fi xing
one’s discrediting characteristics – Goffman’s example for this is the
person who has plastic surgery to eradicate a physical disfiguration or
someone who devotes private effort to excel in areas ordinarily closed
to one with such a shortcoming.179 Or one may attempt normalcy
by “passing.” With individuals the choice between overt corrections
or passing is usually determined by the quality of the stigmatizing

177 178 179

Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10.
How stigma labels shape behavior 97

attribute – if it is immediately noticeable, passing may not be an avail-

able strategy. This implies that stigma categories that have less of a
correspondence to physical reality are more conducive to the “pass-
ing” strategy. The obvious example is racial categories which are per-
ceived to be dichotomous descriptions of one physical dimension – say
skin color – but are in reality catch-all labels for a cluster of vari-
ables ranging from skin color to socio-economics. Such a cluster of
variables creates a lot of fuzziness around the demarcation and opens
up the “passing” option for many individuals who possess attributes
from both sides of the divide.
The analogy to states is not as tortured as one would imagine.
Obviously, states do not have the option of leaving their neighborhood
and creating a new identity elsewhere. Therefore, the first option of
trying to overcome stigma labels by taking direct, corrective action
is the dominant strategy for states. Nevertheless, there are historical
examples of behavior similar to “passing” on the international level.
For instance, in the example of Greece at the turn of the twentieth
century, as discussed by Toynbee (see above, pp. 84–5), we see shades
of “passing,” a strategy that was replicated by many East European
states later in that century. In the case of countries, “passing” is usu-
ally accomplished by sweeping under the rug certain historical periods
of dissimilarity with the core and constructing a national identity that
is centered on a period of common lineage. So the Greeks, for instance,
treated the 500-year-old Ottoman “interruption” as irrelevant to their
national identity formation (except as an “Other”), thereby forging
a link with Europe through the Ancient Greek heritage. The East
European countries had a similar approach to their communist past
after the fall of the Iron Curtain. One may call this the ugly duck-
ling approach to “passing” – the potentially stigmatizing attributes are
treated not so much as something to be fi xed, but rather as external
inauthentic impositions that can easily be shed. Underneath it all, the
ugly duckling is actually one of the beautiful swans, inherently entitled
to swim in the best pond at the country club.
Leaving the “passing” issue aside, which is not really an option for
countries that cannot mount a plausible claim to a common herit-
age with the core, the more viable option for a country which wants
to overcome its stigmatization is “correction.” However, as Goffman
warns us, this is only a half-way solution even when it is success-
ful: “Where such repair is possible, what often results is not the
98 States as outsiders

acquisition of fully normal status, but a transformation of self from

someone with a particular blemish into someone with a record of hav-
ing corrected a particular blemish.”180 This is an obstacle to autonomy
in several ways: the taint of once having the discreditable attribute
remains (hinting at the possibility that one can easily fall back); a
sense of inauthenticity (externally imposed and internally felt) per-
sists, which threatens ontological security; and resources which may
otherwise be utilized are directed to the ultimately fruitless goal of
correcting the “stigma.” As Bauman notes, “the stranger cannot cease
to be a stranger. The best he can be is a former stranger, ‘a friend on
approval’ and permanently on trial, a person vigilantly watched and
constantly under pressure to be someone else than he is.”181
On the flip side, there is also the possibility that a state can embrace
its stigma. Goffman outlines two such approaches: on the one hand,
“the person with a shameful differentness can break with what is
called reality, and obstinately attempt to employ an unconventional
interpretation of the character of his social identity.”182 On the other,
“he may also see the trials he has suffered as a blessing in disguise.”183
The Soviet Union embraced the mantle of “Easternness” as a way of
claiming a leadership position outside the core – this would be the
former strategy, shared by present-day Iran. In other words, when
states employ this strategy, they claim to reject the dominant norms of
the international system and substitute their own version of “reality.”
The latter strategy of seeing past stigma as a “blessing” is employed at
times by countries such as present-day Turkey and Japan, who often
claim to be a “bridge” between the East and the West.
Goffman argues that the precise timing of when one acquires a
stigma (or learns of the existence of one’s stigmatizing attribute)
is crucial in shaping the subsequent response of the actor. In other
words, there is a difference between the responses of those who are
raised with the awareness of their disadvantageous situation and those
who learn later in life that they are stigmatized. Goffman further
distinguishes among those in the latter group: some learn late in life
that they have always been discreditable, which involves “a radical

180
Ibid., pp. 9–10.
181
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 72.
182
Goffman, Stigma, p. 10.
183
Ibid., p. 11.
States, habitus, and stigma 99

reorganization of [the] view of [the] past”184 and others become stig-

matized as a result of joining a new community and when they “must
learn a second way of being that is felt by those around them to be
the real and valid one.”185 The main difference in response has to do
with whether the actor’s identity is built around the fact of stigma,
or if stigma is later attached to an already formed (or semi-formed)
identity.186 Actors in the latter group display a more tenuous identifi-
cation with others who share the stigma, and are more likely to try to
manage their stigma instead.187
The timing of the stigmatization makes a difference in the interna-
tional system as well. Countries with colonial pasts mostly articulated
their national identities after the stigmatization of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Countries that were not colonized, how-
ever, are more similar to individuals who acquire stigma after adult-
hood. Awareness of stigma comes after the country has cultivated an
institutional character, a world-vision, and a certain habitus of its
own. This is what sets countries like Turkey, Japan, and Russia apart
from the rest of the “East.”

States, habitus, and stigma

I have been arguing thus far that state identities, just like individual
identities, can very much be tainted by stigmas. Stigmatization shapes
the long-term state strategies in the international system, just as the
presence of a stigmatizing attribute ends up framing a person’s long-
term attitude toward survival in society. Yet states are not people,188 and
they do not have a “psychological make-up,” so what precisely is the
mechanism through which a stigma label may affect state behavior?
It is possible to circumvent this question by arguing that once the
state response to social constraints has been formulated we can treat
states as individual persons as far as their international actions are
concerned. This point applies to strategies and motivations of a social
nature as much as it applies to strategies based on material capability.

184 185
Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 35.
186
Obviously, identity formation is an ongoing process.
187
Goffman, Stigma, pp. 92–5.
188
In “State as a Person,” Wendt considers the possibility that states may be
thought to have a collective consciousness similar to other superorganisms
such as beehives. He fi nds the argument difficult to square with physicalism,
100 States as outsiders

The argument will work just as well if we simply treat states “as if”
they are persons. Realists treat states as unitary actors who care only
about their physical security, and therefore do not extend the “as if”
treatment to social relations. However, the physical security assump-
tion is no less problematic than assumptions regarding more “social”
aspects of state behavior: “Physical security assumes that states have
something like ‘bodies’ that can die.”189 In other words, any IR theory
that treats states as unitary actors inevitably requires heuristic leaps.
Therefore, there is no reason why the personification of statehood
should stop with an application of Hobbesian state-of-nature theory
about self-help.
There is another way of conceptualizing how stigma may affect
state identity, and that is through the concept of habitus. I discussed
above how perceptions of normality and stigma may affect a group’s
charisma and self-image. Such understandings become incorporated
into the habitus of the group’s members. An individual’s habitus is “an
active residue or sediment of his past that functions within his present,
shaping his perception, thought, and action and thereby molding
social practice in a regular way. It consists in dispositions, schemas,
forms of know-how and competence, all of which function below the
level of consciousness.”190 The habitus of an individual does not fi x
the individual’s response to a particular situation in a functionalist
way, but does affect the boundaries of an individual’s perception of
the situation: “social agents are like players in a game” and “habituses
predispose agents to act in particular ways without reducing them to
cultural dopes or inhibiting their strategic capacities.”191 Furthermore,
for Bourdieu and other sociologists who have worked on the concept,

but points out that we often do refer “to states ‘as if’ they have emotions and
therefore conscious,” 313. One way of conceiving the consciousness of the
state would be as state subjectivity and memory, constituted by narratives.
If states had collective consciousness, it would follow that they feel various
human emotions associated with the act of recognition, such as humiliation
and loss of self-esteem. For an extended discussion of this issue, see also
Ringmar, “On the Ontological Status”; Hall, “Getting Emotional”; Wight
“State Agency”; Neumann, “Beware of Organicism”; Jackson, “Hegel’s
House.”
189
Mitzen, “Ontological Security,” 351.
190
Crossley, “The Phenomenological Habitus,” 83, quoting Bourdieu,
Distinction, p. 466.
191
Ibid., 84.
States, habitus, and stigma 101

no habitus can ever be an isolated, individual creation: “Since the

history of the individual is never anything other than a certain speci-
fication of the collective history of his class or group, each individual
system of dispositions may be seen as a structural variant of all other
group or class habitus, expressing the difference between the trajecto-
ries and positions inside or outside the class.”192 Elias also associates
habitus with the larger group: in his seminal work, The Germans, he
builds an entire explanatory framework around this concept. In that
work, it becomes clear that, for Elias, the “national” group is espe-
cially instrumental in shaping individual habituses:193 “The fortunes
of a nation become crystallized in institutions which are responsible
for ensuring that the most different people of a society acquire the
same characteristics, possess the same national habitus.”194 For Elias,
common language is an obvious example of such an institution.
There is an implication even from this fi rst example195 that the state
must be instrumental in shaping the “national habitus.” In fact, Elias
goes on to immediately bemoan the fact that “it is not yet common
practice today to link the current social and national habitus of a
nation to its so-called ‘history’, and especially to the state formation
process it has experienced.”196 To argue that it should be otherwise is
not to push for an essentialist or functionalist understanding of his-
tory, but to realize that certain group-understandings (independent of
their veracity even at the time they were formed) can get reproduced
(almost) ad infinitum and inform present-day behavior. This is espe-
cially the case in modernity, in the nation-state era.197
Obviously, not every reaction to past events leaves indelible marks
on the national habitus: generally speaking, significant events influ-
encing state formation have a greater impact on shaping the national

192
Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory, p. 86.
193
Elias’s use of this term pre-dates Bourdieu, but the two approaches are not
contradictory. Elias seems to use this term to imply a “second nature” or
“embodied social learning.” Dunning and Mennell, “Preface,” p. ix.
194
Elias, The Germans, p. 18.
195
Elias does not point out this link explicitly in reference to this example,
but it is well documented that a common language, at least in the way
we understand the term today, very much presumes a common state. See
Connor, “Illusions of Homogeneity.”
196
Elias, The Germans, p. 19.
197
The same argument is captured by the concept of ontological security
discussed earlier.
102 States as outsiders

habitus than later developments. State formation, or modern state

formation, is what makes the conceptualization of the nation possible
in the first place. Therefore, state formation may be thought of as a
rough equivalent to childhood socialization. In his discussion of the
Germans, Elias points to four peculiarities of state formation which
to him seem to be of particular significance in understanding the
German habitus: (1) the “middle” position of the Germanic-speaking
peoples between people who spoke Latin derivations and people who
spoke Slavonic languages; (2) the difficulty of living in the shadow of a
greater past; (3) discontinuities in the German state formation; (4) the
fact that the unification of Germany was achieved through military
and not peaceful means (which consolidated the elevated status of the
military and bureaucratic nobility over the bourgeois middle class).
It is not the purpose of this book to analyze the national habituses of
Turkey, Japan, or Russia, but the arguments I have presented thus far
can easily be read into the framework Elias provides. In other words,
there are two commonalities between the national habituses of these
three former empires: (1) the experience of stigmatization as a result of
comparative “backwardness” from the onset of modern state forma-
tion; and (2) the difficulty of living in the shadow of a greater past.198
Of course, there are also differences: Japan’s geography, for instance,
sets it apart from both Turkey and Russia. Russia’s Christian heritage
sets it apart from Turkey and Japan. The Ottoman Empire’s trauma
as a result of being “double-crossed” by Christian millets sets Turkey
apart from both Russia and Japan (which have specific traumas of
their own). Yet as far as state identity from a systemic perspective is
concerned, the two similarities I have pointed out have been the most
determinative.

Explaining strategy selection

While the concept of national habitus goes a long way to explain
a shared sense of stigmatization shaping the worldview of the
decision-makers and the population, analyses of strategy selection are

198
Elias argues that “it is a proven fact that the members of states and other
social units which have lost their claim to a position of highest rank … often
require a long time, even centuries, to come to terms with this changed
situation and consequent lowering of their self-esteem.” The Germans, p. 19.
Explaining strategy selection 103

complicated by the fact that state identity is always contested at the

domestic level.
Domestic contestation over state interests can be explained in ref-
erence to three fields of struggle: political, economic (material), and
social (cultural).199 Economic and social fields generate their own
form of capital and classes, and politics is the sphere where the inter-
ests that have their sources in these other fields clash. At times, the
economic struggle will dominate the domestic field of politics, and in
those cases the state will play off classes against war factions in other
states. At other times, the divisions in society will be over social capi-
tal, and the identity of the state may even be at stake. During those
times, the state elite will play off social strata (or status groups)200
within domestic society against classes or war factions and other
states. 201
I cannot offer a universal theory of domestic contestation versus
state autonomy within the scope of this book. What I can do instead
is to point out that there may be certain contexts in which the inter-
national strategy of the state will be contested primarily within the
domestic socio-cultural sphere as opposed to the economic sphere.
In those contexts, the societal divisions over understandings of state
identity will be more determinative of the outcome than economic
bases. I propose that major defeat of the state in the international sys-
tem and/or state breakdown create exactly the type of context where
the struggles within the social sphere to defi ne the state’s identity
would be elevated to special prominence in the political sphere. In a
general sense, state identity is always contested at the domestic level.
There are always groups within any society who are not satisfied with
the way state goals or normative ideals are defined. However, certain
cataclysmic events such as military defeat and/or state breakdown
create particularly acute dynamics of contestation because they sap
the legitimacy of the traditional order.

199
I am simplifying Bourdieu’s distinction here by following disciplinary
convention: he distinguished between social, cultural, and symbolic fields.
200
Social status groups and economic classes often overlap, but they are not
one and the same. High levels of education, for instance, give individuals
access to social capital which may be exchanged with economic capital.
201
Even this dichotomy is false because both of these struggles are ongoing and
ever-present. Nevertheless, for purposes of social analysis we may bracket
one off while we focus on the other.
104 States as outsiders

A state’s ability to compete and command respect in the inter-

national system depends on how closely its domestic norms align with
the normative ideal of the system at a given period. Stigmatization is
obviously an obstacle to respect and equal treatment. If that is the
case, it would follow that the prestige of the state in the international
system depends at least in part on how well the state negotiates the
social constraints of the system. The sovereignty project of the state
in some sense depends on satisfying the expectations stemming from
the national status. Therefore, we can conclude that whichever group
emerges from the period of readjustment following military defeat
will sustain its legitimacy to the degree that it delivers on this promise,
which in turn is predicated on the social norms of the international
system.202
I argued above that there are two broad strategies available to
a state dealing with international stigmatization: attempting nor-
malcy (either by passing or by correction) or embracing the stigma
(by reinterpreting normative reality in general or the value of the
stigma in particular as a “blessing in disguise”). To put it in the other
terminology I have been employing thus far, such a state can attempt
to join the “established” or accept that it will remain an outsider in
the system.
We may deduce from the above discussion that several factors influ-
ence an agent’s response to stigmatization: the past of the stigmatized
actor (habitus), the imagination of the actor, the present-day ability of
the actor, and the larger normative framework. Let’s take each in turn.
The habitus has a bearing on the issue because those who have had
power in the past are more likely to resent the loss of it. It is possible
to read Nietzsche as arguing that the man of ressentiment is someone
who is physically weak but nevertheless lusts for political supremacy
because he feels entitled to it.203 The slave revolt in morality does not
originate with the slaves; it originates with priests who had a supreme
position in society (and continue to feel entitled to it) but were defeated
by the brute force of the nobles. The attitude of the slave is different
than that of the priests: “not at all used to positing values himself,
he also attached no more value to himself than his masters attached

202
See also Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 235–7.
203
Reginster, “Nietzsche on Ressentiment.”
Explaining strategy selection 105

to him.”204 The slave is thus resigned to a worthless (or, we may say,

stigmatized) way of life. Unlike the slave, who benefits from a value
system organized around the feeling of ressentiment but is not crea-
tive enough to invent it, the priestly originator of ressentiment values
is someone who is used to exercising power, but has now lost that
power to someone who is physically stronger.
Among states, countries (and titular nations within those coun-
tries) which are used to being masters of their own domain are more
likely to suffer doubly from defeat. First, they suffer like everybody
else from the immediate threat to physical security which inevita-
bly accompanies the loss of empire and military defeat. Yet, the real
suffering is in the other, more social aspects of corporate identity.
Especially jeopardized is the state’s ontological security. The transi-
tion from being a threat to being a loser, by definition, impinges on
the desire to have a stable social identity in the system. Relationship
routines are damaged or broken. This threat to ontological security
does not sit well with the national interest in “collective self-esteem.”
We can assume, therefore, that the more powerful and/or prestigious
the state before defeat and imperial collapse, the longer it will take to
readjust to the new international environment.
The past matters in another way – if enough common historical
affi nity exists between the defeated and the victors, the stigmatized
and the normals, defeat may become the opportunity to reclaim that
common ground to reconstruct a new identity narrative. As discussed
earlier, one strategy available to (some) new regimes is to “pass” by
claiming stigmatization to be an aberration caused by the previous
regime and not something attached to the nation itself. “Passing” is
not that different than “correction”; or rather the difference is a mat-
ter of degree not substance. Both strategies involve emulation of the
normative standards as opposed to a rejection of them. In domestic
society, actors who pass are those whose different or discreditable
attributes are not immediately known – in other words, they are those
people who look and behave in ways similar enough to the normals.
States which are similar enough to the established – in geography,
religion, race, etc. – have also tried strategies similar to passing.
Such affi nity works another way, however. If, for some reason
(generally stemming from the condition of the normative hierarchy),

204
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, p. 261.
106 States as outsiders

passing is not attempted or fails to achieve the desired outcome,

such frustrated actors are more likely to attempt ressentiment or
simple rejection strategies. Just as Moses was initially a member of
the Pharaoh’s household, states which have a higher affi nity to the
core (the outsiders among the insiders) are more likely to take up the
plight of the stigmatized as a cause. By doing so, they benefit from
the very stratification that they purport to fight – the same normative
order which ranks them lower than the established also makes them a
leader among the stigmatized outsiders.
Therefore, the flexibility of the larger normative framework in
terms of the promise of upward mobility also makes a difference in
strategy selection. As long as we are on the subject of ressentiment,
we may also invoke Scheler’s description of the arriviste, who “vigor-
ously pursues the goods and stations in life which are associated with
the values possessed by the noble, but he does not pursue these goods
for their intrinsic worth.”205 Instead, the arriviste is concerned with
“being more highly esteemed than others.”206 The arriviste is a social
climber: “He must unceasingly construct a sense of his worth through
comparisons with others. Feelings of self-satisfaction are accumulated
through looking down upon those he has surpassed, but these feelings
are impermanent.”207 According to Scheler, what separates the man
of ressentiment from the arriviste is a sense of impotence. The strat-
egy of the arriviste is built on the belief that one can rise through the
ranks by taking corrective action. If there is no upward mobility in
the hierarchy, or if for whatever reason the closure criteria is defined
in such a way that the actor has no hope of gaining entry, the arriviste
strategy becomes unsustainable.
The imagination of the actor also matters to some degree if the choice
is between living with the way things are versus rejecting the reality
of the situation. To put it in state-centric terms, it matters whether
an alternative value system is available through which the defeat can
be recast as something other than defeat, a moral victory even. This
is what ressentiment value systems achieve – weakness, i.e. stigma,
becomes a blessing. While ressentiment values, as Nietzsche warned
us, are not real, substantive values, but rather inversions or negations

205
Morelli, “Ressentiment and Rationality.”
206 207
Ibid. Ibid.
Explaining strategy selection 107

of existing value demands, it still makes a difference whether they

can be articulated as a coherent ideology (as in, say, present forms of
Islamic fundamentalism). A child who stomps off the playground in
anger will have few followers, if any, and only for a short time, if at all;
a child who convinces himself and others that the playground itself is
dirty and undesirable can maintain that stance for much longer.
The present-day resources of the actor also matter, but to a limited
degree. Both passing and correction – i.e. the arriviste strategies –
require some material resources, and so does leading a priestly
charge of ressentiment against the established. We can speculate that
resources make a difference at the extreme ends: without resources,
no strategy can be attempted, and one is relegated to the slave pos-
ition in the typology; with great resources one can maintain a strat-
egy of rejection even without ideological justification. The greater
the material performance of the state, the less is the need to emu-
late the dominant norm or to avoid stigmatization because domestic
legitimacy can also be attained to some degree by delivering concrete
material results. In the middle, once chosen, both the arriviste and
the priestly strategies are equally sustainable (keeping all other fac-
tors constant) because they tend to generate their own resources: the
former gives access to privileges and rights (to the degree it is suc-
cessful), the latter elevates one’s position among the stigmatized and
the excluded.
To sum up, the two broad strategies available to outsider states
are: embrace the international normative order and deal with the
problem of stigma by casting it as an endogenous problem, or
reject the international normative order and deal with the problem
of stigma as an exogenous challenge. Passing and correction are
strategies which are variations of the first option. Ressentiment
and rejection are variations of the latter. If any middle ground
exists, it is in what we may call, for lack of a better term, the
arriviste priesthood option: the strategy of the actor who seeks
esteem by not challenging the established normative order but act-
ing as a gatekeeper and disseminator for it. In any outsider coun-
try, groups favoring each of these options are always present, but
after cataclysmic events which throw state identity into question,
such groups come to dominate national debates. Depending on the
larger international context and current conditions of the country
108 States as outsiders

(as outlined above), which one of these responses is going to be

more attractive to the domestic population varies. In the follow-
ing chapters, I will demonstrate how this dynamic played out in
the specific cases of Turkey after World War I, Japan after World
War II, and Russia after the Cold War.
Pa rt I I

An imperial message

The Emperor – so they say – has sent a message, directly from his death
bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken
refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun … The messen-
ger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out
and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into
resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he
moves forwards easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its
dwelling places are infi nite. If there were an open field, how he would
fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist
on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is
still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace.
Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing
would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the
steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved.
He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the court-
yards through the second palace encircling the fi rst, and, then again,
through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so
on for thousands of years. And if he fi nally burst through the outermost
door – but that can never, never happen – the royal capital city, the
centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of
sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone
with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream
of that message when evening comes.
Franz Kafka
From An Imperial Message (1919)
3 “The barbarians”: Turkey
(1918–1938)

I had thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that the
planet the little prince came from was scarcely any larger than a house!
But that did not really surprise me much. I knew very well that in add-
ition to the great planets – such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus – to
which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of
which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the
telescope. When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give
it a name, but only a number. He might call it, for example, “Asteroid
325.” I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the
little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only
once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astron-
omer, in 1909.
On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the
International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But
he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.
Grown-ups are like that …
Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish
dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change
to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration
all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time
everybody accepted his report.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, Chapter 4

Introduction
In 1909, the same year a Turkish astronomer discovered the home
planet of one of the most charming characters in literature, Lord
Robert Cecil wrote in his notes: “A fanatically ignorant people, a bar-
barous nation; they want the capitulations lifted … Turks will always
be Turks. They will never become Europeans. Their only redeeming

111
112 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

quality is their military skill.”1 The question of whether Turkey will

ever become European is still up for debate, but his assessment of
Turks’ military skill was verified in the next decade. The Ottoman
Empire was defeated in World War I and most of its territories occu-
pied soon after; yet the Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal’s leader-
ship were able to force out occupying armies in three years – foiling
best laid plans – and sit down to negotiate a treaty with the great
powers in 1922 on their own terms. By 1938, Lord Robert Cecil must
have been surprised by how European-friendly the state forged by
this treaty would turn out to be. In 1922, it would have been almost
impossible to predict such an outcome.
Coming off such an unexpected victory against the West, it was
anybody’s guess what the Turks would do. In 1922, Greek Prime
Minister Venizelos warned the British “there was nothing that could
stop Mustafa Kemal … from turning against the Allies. He would by
that time have his head swelled more than ever. In such circumstances
he would probably be a match for the French in Syria, and throw them
into the sea. He would undoubtedly then go for Constantinople, and
close the Dardanelles.”2 He asked whether the British believed that
“having so reconstituted the Turkish Empire, MK [sic] would hesitate
to pursue actively the problem of the reconquest of the Arab coun-
tries, and engage in every kind of hostile action against [the British
Empire] in the East?”3 He was not wrong: the British Empire had
two causes for real concern about the direction the new leadership in
Turkey would take.
First was the possibility that Turks would use their hold on the
seat of the Caliph, the leader of the Muslim World, to foment revolt
in the Eastern colonies of the British Empire. This worry was con-
stantly expressed in British reports during the Independence War. For
instance, in 1922, a British officer reported:

I have been convinced during this visit that there is a great Mohammedan
movement on foot now directed against the British in India and

1
Uğurlu, Türkiye’nin Parçalanması, p. 128.
2
Record by Sir E. Crowe of a conversation with M. Venizelos, May 25, 1922,
p. 270 in Şimşir, İngiliz belgelerinde.
3
Record by Sir E. Crowe of a conversation with M. Venizelos, May 25, 1922.
Ibid.
Introduction 113

Mesopotamia, up until now the Nationalist Turks … Kemal up until now

has refrained from attacking England by means of the great weapon of
Islam but … Kemal at dinner informs me that if now this time he does not
get peace, he will use this weapon and it will have far and wide reaching
results, great wars and bloodshed.4

This worry, which was also shared by France, is reflected in numerous

discussions5 and it was corroborated to some degree by the pressure
Britain was getting from its Asian colonies to reach a settlement with
Ankara.6
The other worry stemmed from the close relationship the Turks had
established with the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. Throughout the
Independence War, British intelligence reported the fi nancial assist-
ance Ankara was getting from the Bolsheviks, and Mustafa Kemal’s
impassioned speeches did nothing to quell the worry that Ankara was
on its way to becoming a satellite of Moscow:

Mustafa Kemal’s response [to Aralov] was chiefly remarkable for his
emphatic affi rmation of the unity of the Turkish army with the Russian
army which he stated formed one line of defence on the East from North
to South; Turkey had come to realize that the forces at work against her
were identical with those which were seeking to destroy Russia, and all
Eastern nations were in the same position as Turkey, i.e. menaced by the
same enemy; Turkish relations with the East were not designed to deceive
the West, for the world could be divided to-day into two distinct parts,
East and West, and the long line of defence on the East could only be main-
tained by complete solidarity of Eastern peoples.7

4
Memorandum by Major General Sir Charles Townsend, July 27, 1922. Ibid.,
p. 384.
5
A few examples: Debates in the House of Commons and Speech of the PM
Mr. Lloyd George in British Near Eastern Policy (August 4, 1922); British
Secretary’s Notes of Conference between the French President of the Council
and the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay
(September 20, 1922); Letter of Sir H. Rumbold to the Marquess Curzon of
Kedleston (May 22, 1922). Ibid.
6
For example, President of the Central Khilafet Committee in India: “By their
support of Greek military adventures British government had broken faith
with India and the Muslim world … If England goes to war with Turkey now
… she never will be able to regain prestige in Asia” (September 19, 1922), in
Şimşir, Homage, p. 21.
7
A report by the British Secret Intelligence Service, Constantinople Branch
(April 21, 1922). Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.
114 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

For almost a decade, even after the war was over, the Turkish leader-
ship in Ankara seemed poised to go over to the Bolshevik camp any
day.8
The Turks themselves were divided on which course was the best one
to follow. They had been debating the road to salvation for more than
100 years: Neo-Ottomanism, Pan-Turanism, Pan-Islamism, British
assistance, Westernization, American mandate, theocracy, communism,
and other ideologies had been proposed at one time or another. After
the Independence War, three main camps had emerged: those who pro-
posed complete Westernization, those who proposed Bolshevism, and
those who proposed Islamism. The fears of the Western powers were
not unfounded. The fate of new Turkey hung in the balance.
The rest, as they say, is history. By the time of Atatürk’s death in
1938, Turkey had become an ally of Britain and had moved away
from Moscow. Both the Sultanate and the Caliphate had been abol-
ished. Turkey never tried to stir trouble in the East but, on the con-
trary, pushed a strong peace agenda through the Sadabad and the
Balkan Pacts she spearheaded into existence. As the former French
Prime Minister M. E. Herriot noted in 1933: “Seemingly relegated to
Asia, Turkey, with her desire for order, peace and progress, moves into
Europe now.”9 In the 1930s, Turkey was so active in regional order
pacts, and so thoroughly committed to a process of Europeanization
domestically, that it seemed impossible to believe that the country was
still ruled by the same people who had been a thorn in Europe’s side
slightly more than a decade before.
From the unexpected foreign policy choices such as Turkey’s insist-
ence on being formally invited to the League of Nations in 1932 to
the wide-sweeping scale of domestic reforms such as the decision to
abolish the Caliphate in 1924, Turkey’s actions in the interwar period
cannot be understood without an understanding of the established-
outsider dynamic in the international system. Turkey’s actions in this
period were driven by the overwhelming aim of joining the com-
munity of “civilized nations” – a community that she had not been

8
Extracts from a speech by Sir Charles Townsend, MP, in the House of
Commons (May 30, 1922): “If Turkey should be driven into an alliance with
Russia and Germany, there is no one here who will doubt what that means to
our Indian Empire, to Iraq, and every where else.” Ibid.
9
Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle, p. 158.
The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire 115

able to penetrate when the country was an empire – and of escap-

ing the stigmatization of backwardness, barbarity, and Easternness.
As Mustafa Kemal asked rhetorically of a French reporter: “Which
nation with a desire to enter civilization has not turned towards the
West?”10 Modern Turkey had won its independence in the battle, but
independence would not guarantee autonomy if Turkey remained an
outsider. This lesson was very much in the Turkish leaders’ minds as
they navigated the international system in the interwar period and
as they clashed with other groups in Turkey who favored alternative
courses of action.
Chapter 3 explores these choices and their consequences in three
main sections. The fi rst section gives a brief account of the histor-
ical background of the Turkish case: the late Ottoman period and
the burdens the nineteenth-century international society placed on
the Ottomans are examined. The second section constructs a nar-
rative of the unexpected choices the Republic of Turkey made after
independence in 1923 until Mustafa Kemal’s death in 1938 (and
the beginning of World War II in 1939). The third section analyzes
these choices through the framework of stigmatization offered in
Chapter 2 .

The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire

I, who am the sultan of sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of
crowns to the monarchs on the face of the earth, shadow of God on earth,
the sultan and sovereign lord of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, of
Rumelia and Anatolia, of Karamania and the land of Rum, of Zulkadria,
Diyarbakir, of Kurdistan, of Azerbaijan, Persia, Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo,
of the Mecca and Medina, of Jerusalem, of all Arabia, of the Yemen and
many other lands, which my noble forefathers and my glorious ancestors –
may God light up their tombs – conquered by the force of their arms and
which my august majesty has made subject to my flaming sword and vic-
torious blade, I, Sultan Süleyman Han, to thee, who art Francis, king of
the land of France. (Opening of a letter sent by Ottoman Sultan to King of
France, 1525)
The Sublime Porte promises a fi rm protection to the Christian Religion and
to its Churches; it further permits the Ministers of the Imperial Court of

10
Interview with French Reporter Maurice Pernot (October 29, 1923), in
Atatürk, Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri, p.23. Also see Yılmaz, İngiliz Basını.
116 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

Russia to make in every circumstance various representations to the Porte

in favor of the below-mentioned Church erected at Constantinople, no less
than of those who serve it, and promises to receive those remonstrances
with attention, as made by a respected person of a neighboring and sin-
cerely friendly power. (Article 7, The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, 1774)

The fi rst capitulation privileges granted by the Ottoman Empire were

to Francis, King of France, who is the addressee of the letter cited
above. The original capitulations were designed to give France an edge
over her European rivals by exclusively profiting from trade within
the Ottoman Empire. As is evident from the opening paragraph of the
letter Suleiman the Magnificent wrote to King Francis, the Ottoman
leaders of the sixteenth century had no worries about their standing
vis-à-vis Europe.11 It is interesting to compare that letter and others
from that period with late-eighteenth- or nineteenth-century docu-
ments. For instance, the language of the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji
(Küçük Kaynarcı) of 1774 provides a stark contrast. This treaty ended
a six-year war with Russia but was the basis of future conflicts. It was
interpreted by St. Petersburg to give Russia the right to act as the sole
guardian of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The
Crimean War of 1853 was provoked by Istanbul’s refusal to recognize
this claim.12
It is not hard to see why Russia would use this treaty to make such an
advantageous claim. Article 7 is written in rather odd language: it calls
Russia a friendly power, and makes it sound as if the Sublime Porte was
looking for a consultant to advise it on affairs of the Church. The power
that Russia claimed Article 7 granted is so out of keeping with what was
usually achieved through military battle that some historians regard the
treaty as an example of “Russian skill and Turkish imbecility.”13 Other
observers, such as Metternich, had a more limited reading of the rights
conferred to Russia under the treaty (privileges having been granted to
other powers previously).14 Nevertheless, the Western powers controlled
almost the entirety of commercial transactions within the empire, thanks
to the privileges of capitulations, and frequently interfered in domestic
affairs on behalf of the non-Muslim groups.

11
See also Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 14; Naff, “Ottoman Empire,”
pp. 143–4.
12
Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, p. 30.
13
Ibid., p. 29. 14 Ibid.
The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire 117

It would be tempting to chalk this entire situation up to the chang-

ing power dynamics that resulted from the weakening material cap-
acity of the Ottomans. The Ottomans had lost control over important
trade routes and had fallen behind Europe in terms of military
advancement. However, to attribute the developments of the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries simply to material strength would miss
an important point: the degree to which the Ottomans, in addition to
their losses on the battlefield, were weakened by the burdens imposed
on them by the new stigmas they encountered (and internalized) as a
consequence of their increasing participation in the European inter-
national order.15
For instance, judging from the historical record of the Ottoman
millet system up to the nineteenth century,16 it was not entirely clear
why the Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire needed special pro-
tection.17 Intervention in domestic affairs on their behalf was usually
justified by reference to the fact that the Ottoman Empire was ruled
by an absolutist regime18 and that there was no constitutional protec-
tion of individual rights within its borders.19 Ironically, every step the
Ottoman rulers took to neutralize this criticism brought them ever
closer to internalizing the normative order of the European society.
In 1839, the Sublime Porte issued the Tanzimat Declaration, which
was intended as a binding contract between the Palace and its sub-
jects. With this declaration, the Sultan accepted limits on his author-
ity, recognized the sanctity of life, property, and individual honor,
and declared that government would be formed not by his will but
in accordance with “fundamental principles” embodied in written
laws. 20 Since it was unclear what these “fundamental principles”
were, the Ottoman High Council issued a verdict saying they would

15
Cemil Aydın’s Anti-Westernism in Asia makes this point most convincingly.
16
Leaving aside the human toll of the original conquests, most brutal acts by
the empire against the Christian millets took place in the nineteenth century.
17
Or more protection than the other subjects of the Sultan. See Göçek, Rise
of the Bourgeoisie; Göçek, Social Constructions of Nationalism; Braude
and Lewis, Christians and Jews; Shaw, “Financial and Administrative
Organization”; Shaw, Between Old and New; Davison, “Turkish Attitudes.”
18
See the discussion of the theory of “Oriental Despotism” in Hobson and
Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 88.
19
Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History; Berkes, Türkiye’de
Çağdaşlaşma.
20
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 188.
118 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

have to be derived from the Sher’ia rules. This decision put the rights
of non-Muslim subjects in question. Could the laws derived from
the Sher’ia principles of Islam really protect their rights? At the end,
Tanzimat worsened the situation that it sought to prevent; starting
with Britain, the Western powers became the entitled inspectors of
how the Tanzimat Declaration was going to be implemented. 21
In response to Western pressures, the Porte issued another dec-
laration in 1856 (Islahat Fermanı). This declaration recognized all
Ottoman subjects as citizens. Muslim and Christian subjects were to
be treated equally, and have common courts. Christians would have
representation in local councils and serve in the army22 and freedom
of speech was recognized. As specially requested by the British ambas-
sador, there would be no punishment for converting. European mer-
chants were invited to participate in increased commerce. Fuat Pasha,
the foreign minister, defended the declaration to detractors by saying
that the interventions of Western powers would now be prevented. 23
Yet the 1856 declaration satisfied no one. The local Christian lead-
ers were unhappy because the millet system had taken a huge blow,
and their authority had been severely limited. Dr Stephan, a high-
ranking Greek, complained to the Sultan: “Are the sectarian inequal-
ities in Europe, in France, England, Prussia any less?” He went on
to question why there was a need to give so many special privileges
to the Christian millets in the Ottoman Empire. 24 The Christian
public was unhappy about the military service provision. The British
ambassador was not pleased with the declaration because he did not
believe it went far enough in protecting missionary activities. The
French ambassador was not happy because it was not guaranteed
that French methods in education and the French Civil Code would
be used after the reforms. The Austrian ambassador brought advice
from Metternich, who told the Ottoman leaders that there was no
need for Turks to become Europeans and they should formulate their
own laws without paying heed to what Europe thought. 25

21
Engelhardt and Ali, Türkiye ve Tanzimat, pp. 130–3; Berkes, Türkiye’de
Çağdaşlaşma, p. 189.
22
The previous arrangement was that Christians had their own millet, with
separate representation. They did not serve in the army, and paid taxes in
lieu of military service.
23
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 191.
24 25
Ibid. Ibid.
The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire 119

Taking Metternich’s advice was not on the cards. This was partly
because the Ottoman Empire, by this time, had become “the Sick
Man of Europe.” However, this was not just a simple description of
the poor material conditions of the empire as it is often assumed to be.
To the contrary, such subjective judgments themselves, accompanied
by double standards and lifestyle intrusions, were contributing to the
loss of material capability by weakening the domestic administrative
system. French observer Ubicini wrote in his Lettres sur la Turquie
that the rights granted to non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were
creating a stark contrast to the situation of Jews in Britain. The reality
was that the European society of states was very much acting like the
established “old village” of Winston Parva.
The underlying issue in nineteenth-century developments was
that the rulers of the Ottoman Empire were under the illusion that
they would be left alone in their domestic affairs and that the sover-
eign rights of the empire would be recognized only if they met civ-
ilization standards, 26 as Russia supposedly had a century before.
Meeting civilization standards, they believed, would leave them free
to address the problems of the economy and military shortcomings
without interference. In reality, this illusion drove them to accept the
nineteenth- century Standard of Civilization that would never treat a
Muslim power as an equal, and simultaneously undermine, by their
own hands, the already weak hold the Ottoman government had
over its territories. The Ottoman Empire did not lose all of its sover-
eign power in battlefields; that power was chipped away by her own
gradual acceptance of and aspirations to the Standard of Civilization
by which the European powers ostensibly operated. The more the
Ottoman Empire aspired to meet European standards, the weaker
it became. Indeed, the more the Ottoman Empire participated in the
international system, the more she internalized the norms of modern-
ity, the more “ashamed” the leaders became of their own people and
institutions, dedicating limited resources to emulation efforts which
were doomed to fail.
The internalization of Western judgment about the Ottoman
Empire happened gradually. The initial exposure to the West was
through the non-Muslim minorities, especially the Greeks, who often

26
Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 19.
120 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

were employed in translator positions and made up a good portion

of the empire’s intellectual elite. For instance, the fi rst example of the
“declinist”27 analyses of Ottoman history (which dominates Turkish
historical accounts to this day – more on this below) can be found in
Dimitri Kantemir’s 1716 tome The History of the Rise and Fall of
the Ottoman Empire. Toynbee also points to this link: “By the later
decades of the seventeenth century, however, the general attitude of
Oriental Christendom towards the West had undergone a profound
change – partly, perhaps, because the bitter memories of Western
oppression had gradually been effaced by time, and partly because
at this moment the West itself rather suddenly ceased to fight wars of
religion.”28 In this way, the Ottoman Greeks became the locomotives
of Westernization in the Ottoman Empire and the influence of their
newly acquired worldview increased after the Ottoman defeat in the
Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, which had led to the aforementioned
Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji. Toynbee notes:

It had been bitter for the Osmanlis to be beaten by the peoples of the
West … It was far more humiliating to be beaten by an Oriental Christian
people and to be compelled to grant to that people privileges which would
place it in the same rank as the Western Powers … The shock produced by
the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarja [sic] was so great that it inspired Ottoman
statesmen to attempt reforms on Western lines; but these fi rst Ottoman
reformers started from the military end like Peter the Great, and not from
the commercial end as their own Oriental Christian subjects had started in
Peter’s generation, now a century past. 29

Toynbee criticizes the Turks’ military emulation as being shortsighted

and faults the Turks for not realizing that “the military efficiency
of the West was a symptom, and not the cause of the West’s general
superiority.”30 Yet in any other age, not only would this be the appro-
priate response to military competition, it would also be a sufficient
response.31 As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 , the onset of modernity
had changed the equation, but one can hardly blame the Turks (or the
Russians for that matter) for not realizing at first that military emulation

27
Beinin, Workers and Peasants, pp. 18–19.
28 29
Toynbee, Turkey, p. 34. Ibid., p. 36. 30 Ibid., p. 37.
31
As Aydın notes, “the development of the image of a universal West was not
a simple product of ‘previously ignorant’ Ottoman, Chinese or Japanese
intellectuals ‘discovering’ the superiority of European civilization.” Anti-
Westernism in Asia, p. 15.
The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire 121

would not be enough. Not that it mattered in the end: once the Ottoman
Empire took Westernization to be a state project, internalization of the
modernist ontology at all levels and sectors became a question of when,
not if.
The declinist historical tradition referred to above is a perfect example
of this process. According to this tradition, still taught in Turkish
high schools, the Ottoman Empire went through five distinct histor-
ical phases: Foundation (1299–1453); Rise (1453–1566); Stagnation
(1566–1699); Decline (1699–1774); and Collapse (1774–1922). This
tradition has come under attack in recent decades from historians32 for
overlooking very complicated processes after the onset of the supposed
“stagnation” phase – the last three centuries of the Ottoman Empire
follow an uneven trajectory, with some periods of progress and peace,
and some periods of regression and turmoil. 33 For instance, despite its
depiction in the West as the example of Oriental despotism par excel-
lence, the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
was also marked by the kind of increased bureaucratization which was
the harbinger of the modern state in Western Europe.34 Ironically, this
development was later interpreted, even by Turks themselves, as one
of the causes of Ottoman decay.35 Two things were influential in turn-
ing this account into the official history of the empire: the trauma of
loss of empire and the internalization of the Western view of all things
Ottoman. The former explains why this account was favored by the
republican regime after the official collapse, the latter explains why we
find the view in wide circulation before the collapse.
In other words, while the account of Ottoman backwardness became
the official history after 1923, there was plenty of internalization of
Western standards before that date,36 first among the non-Muslim
elite, then among the educated elite among the Muslim population,37
most notably the newly Westernized military cadets.38 As Aydın notes,

32
E.g. İnalcık, Karpat, Hodgson as quoted and discussed in Armağan,
Osmanlının Kayıp Atlası, chapter 1.
33
See also the discussion in Chapter 1.
34
Darling, “Finance Scribes”; Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change.”
35
Armağan, Osmanlının Kayıp Atlası, p. 75.
36
Aydın argues that the main shift happened in the two decades after the
Vienna Congress. Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 16–17.
37
E.g. works of Mustafa Sami Efendi, Sadik Rifat Pasha, as discussed by
Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 18–21.
38
Ibid., p. 72. Also see Tunaya, Türkiye’nin Siyasi Hayatında.
122 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

“parallel to their recognition of a superior universal civilization in

Europe, members of the Ottoman elite agreed that they themselves
were less modern and less civilized than the Europeans and hence
needed rapid reforms in order to develop in the same direction.”39
Throughout the nineteenth century, there was a growing worry
among the elites that the Ottoman Empire was really “the Sick Man
of Europe.” Toynbee’s remarks about the applicability40 of this term to
Turkey are quite interesting:

The picture of the Turk as “the Sick Man” has had a curious history. It sub-
stituted itself in the imagination of the West for the older picture, in which
the Westerner was the sinner and Turk was the Scourge of God … The phrase
… was coined by the Czar Nicholas I in 1853, during a conversation with the
British Ambassador in St. Petersburg. “We have on our hands a sick man – a
very sick man … He may suddenly die upon our hands …” From that day
to this, the imminent decease of the supposed invalid has perpetually been
awaited by his neighbours – by some of them with pleasurable expectancy,
by others with anxiety, but by all with a dogmatic faith which seems cap-
able of surviving any number of disillusionments. It was awaited in 1876
and in 1912 and, most confidently of all, in 1914; and now, when the Turk
has given incontrovertible evidence of outward health and vigour by impos-
ing the peace-settlement of Lausanne upon the victorious Allied Powers, his
imminent dissolution through some hidden internal disease is prophesied
with all the old assurance … This persistence of the “Sick Man” theory indi-
cates how powerfully the Western attitude towards Turkey is governed by a
priori notions and how little it is based upon objective facts.41

Toynbee was quite right in observing that the term was an exag-
geration at best, but he was underestimating the damage done by
this label. A great deal of Ottoman sickness was actually caused by
the belief that it was sick – like a patient who is hospitalized for a
curable ailment but catches some deadly virus in the ward. In fact,
Ottoman efforts at liberalization, which were intended to keep the
empire together, only seemed to speed up its dismantling. By the
end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had lost almost
all of its territories in Europe. This created a backlash against the

39
Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 24.
40
See also Stavrianos, Ottoman Empire.
41
Toynbee, Turkey, pp. 9–10.
The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire 123

liberalization reforms and strengthened various reactionary ideo-

logical currents among the Muslim elite such as pan-Turkism and
pan-Islamism.
The 1856 declaration had two major consequences: it increased the
speed of nationalization processes among the Christian groups – who
were also the main beneficiaries of increased European commerce42 –
and created a backlash among the now disgruntled Muslim subjects
who were shut out of any benefits this new European-style admin-
istrative system was supposed to provide.43 It did earn the Ottoman
Empire a half-hearted recognition as a European power in the Paris
Peace Conference. However, this recognition did not bring any real
change in practical treatment.
In 1876, the Ottoman Empire adopted a constitutional mon-
archy regime and assembled its fi rst Parliament. The parliamentary
regime was suspended after only two years following the blunders
of the humiliating Turko-Russian War of 1877–8. The constitution
was restored following the Young Turk revolution in 1908. In the
interim period, the model for the Ottomans favoring Westernization
had become Japan.44 It was believed that Japan had been successful
because the Japanese had been able to Westernize selectively.45 The
Ottoman intelligentsia and ruling class by then had jumped on vari-
ous ideological bandwagons that were quite different in tone than
the conciliatory measures of the early nineteenth century. The Sultan
chose to emphasize pan-Islamism and stress his position as the Caliph
in order to retain Muslim subjects such as the Albanians and the Kurds
within the empire. The military elite and the Young Turks increasingly
favored a revisionist strategy.46 Here we may turn to Goffman for

42
In contrast, Tsarist Russia – not a paragon of individual rights by any
stretch – as a European power, had the right to shut its borders to the
influence of Western trade.
43
The Ottoman Muslims in general, and the Turks in particular, had a strong
belief that they had earned, by their past victories, the right to be Hakime-i
Milliye (the Ruling Millet). See Akçam, Türkiye’yi Yeniden Düşünmek,
p. 191; see also Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 127; Bozkurt,
Azınlık Imtiyazları, pp. 60–1.
44
For an extended discussion of this development, see Worringer, “‘Sick Man
of Europe’.”
45
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 370.
46
“While the despot of Turkey and the despot of Russia tremble and hide …
it has come to pass in the Far East among this admirable people that, like
the Turks, have been treated … as barbarians … [that] the Japanese tended
124 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

insight: “Instead of cowering, the stigmatized individual may attempt

to approach mixed contacts with hostile bravado, but this can induce
from others its own set of troublesome reciprocations.”47 The import-
ant point is that both the conciliatory and the revisionist measures
were formulated as a response to the Ottoman Empire’s character-
ization (and self-characterization) as a tyrannical, backward, semi-
civilized state.
As the break-up of the empire continued, the Ottoman intelligentsia
who may otherwise have tempered the excesses of the Sultan became
radicalized themselves: “Concluding that their liberal experiment had
been a failure, the [Committee of Union and Progress] leaders turned
to Pan-Turkism, a xenophobic and chauvinistic brand of national-
ism that sought to create a new empire based on Islam and Turkish
ethnicity.”48 In 1908, the Parliament reopened, and the Committee
of Union and Progress (CUP) took the helm of government. However
troubling the Pan-Turkism of the CUP regime may seem in light of the
subsequent events, such as the mass killing of Armenians, it has to be
acknowledged that this ideology came of age at the end of the nine-
teenth century and as a result was very much shaped by the dynamics
described in Chapter 1.
The strategy of the CUP can be seen as a last-ditch effort to over-
come the general insecurity caused by Ottoman stigmatization and the
simultaneous unraveling of the empire. As difficult as it is to under-
stand in hindsight, the leaders of the CUP fi rmly believed, at this late
date, that the dissolution of the empire could be stopped if only the
right measures were implemented domestically. In foreign relations,
the Young Turks became embroiled in some destructive wars,49 not
the least of which was World War I. The Ottoman Empire’s desire

to develop in all the Far East their material and moral influences, ‘to make
themselves the guardians, otherwise the masters, of the yellow world.’ …
They whose civilization, achieved in half a century, has become superior
to European civilization which has fallen into decay; they who do not have
to reproach massacres, who do not have to gag any mouths out of which a
liberal word came, who do not have to exile or suppress patriots. … Indeed,
for our part, it is this ‘yellow’ civilization that we wish to see universalized.”
Mechveret Supplement Français, French organ of the CUP, 1905, as quoted
in Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’,” 207.
47
Goffman, Stigma, p. 18.
48
Melson, “Paradigms of Genocide,” 157.
49
See the Balkan Wars.
Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy 125

to recapture lost territories in the West was partly motivated by its

desire to hold on to its remaining territories in the East. The empire’s
status among her Muslim subjects hinged on her potential to stand as
an equal to Europe.50 The Young Turks, and other Ottoman leaders,
still believed in 1913 that the empire was salvageable.51 Unfortunately
for them, along with her allies Germany and Austria-Hungary, the
Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1918. The Armistice of Mudros was
signed on October 30, 1918. Soon afterwards, most of the remain-
ing territories of the empire were under occupation. The Ottoman
Empire had failed miserably in her quest to regain equal footing with
Europe.

Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy

When they took Belgrade from us, the enemy delegates also asked for the
town of Niş. The Ottoman delegate stood up. “Why ask for so little?” he
said, “We’ll be happy to give you Constantinople!” For our fathers, this is
how close Niş was to Istanbul. We thought that the Turkish nation could
not survive if we left Vardar, Tripoli, Crete and Medina. 52

The War of Independence (1918–1922)

Understanding the developments of the interim period between the
Mudros Armistice (1918) and the abolition of the Sultanate (1922)

50
For example, see the letter from Earl Kitchener, British High Commissioner in
Egypt, to Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs (November 3, 1913):
Turkish collapse appears complete. From now on, they cannot maintain their
old position either in Europe or elsewhere. A Mussulman in Cairo told me
that if the Turks cannot stay in Europe by force they will no longer have the
right to rule over Islam. The population, while disliking the Turks, is very
upset about the defeat of a Muslim power, (In Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde)
51
Letter from Gerald Lowther, British Ambassador in Istanbul, to Edward
Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs (January 6, 1913): “Turks still
cannot face the bitter reality. They still think they can negotiate,” in ibid.
Letter from Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Gerald
Lowther, British Ambassador in Istanbul (January 11, 1913): “I’ve met with
the Ottoman Ambassador Rashid Pasha. I told the Turks that if they want
to save Istanbul they should give up Edirne, and they would lose everything
if there is a war. All my words were in vain. Rashid Pasha notified that the
Ottoman delegation was going to leave the conference,” in ibid.
52
Atay, Zeytindağı, p. 10.
126 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

is essential to contextualizing the foreign policy choices open to the

Republic of Turkey in the interwar period. During the four years of
the Independence War,53 the Western powers were the deadly enemies
of the Turks, whereas the Bolsheviks and Muslims of Asia provided
monetary and moral support.
After Mudros, the remaining territories (Asia Minor) of the
Ottoman Empire, namely those territories that had not been officially
partitioned, came under occupation. The ostensible justification was
Article 18 of the Armistice, which provided that the Triple Entente
and its allies could occupy parts of Turkey to provide for the secur-
ity of local non-Muslims. Having already moved into Arabia and
the Levant, the British stationed their ships in Istanbul; Greek forces
took control of Western Anatolia; Italians were in the Mediterranean
region; and the French moved into the southeast.
In 1918, Turkish leadership and the intelligentsia in Istanbul were
divided on what would be the best course to retain some semblance
of independence after defeat. One group favored appealing to prin-
ciples of self-determination, as outlined by the US President Woodrow
Wilson. It was unclear, however, how effective this approach would
be, considering that Wilson had not recognized Turkey as a nation
that was entitled to self-determination.54 Another group favored ask-
ing for a mandate status from one of the Western powers, the United
States being the popular choice. Yet another group believed that the
only salvation lay in the Turkish hold over the Caliphate seat. Some
believed that the British would help and protect what was left of the
Ottoman Empire because they would have use for a friendly Caliph,
who would help control the large Muslim populations under British

53
This is how this period is referred to in Turkish history (Kurtuluş Savaşı –
the term may also be translated as War of Liberation or Salvation). Because
the alternatives from Western accounts (Greco-Turkish War, Turkish–
Armenian War, etc.) give an incomplete picture and, furthermore, obscure
the role of Western powers in this war, I see no reason not to defer to the
Turkish terminology.
54
“Although the US maintained a policy of careful neutrality towards Turkey,
President Wilson’s exhortations to his countrymen to be neutral in thought
as well as in deed in the war, apparently were not meant to apply to the
Turks … When Woodrow Wilson was considering the appointments shortly
after his election in 1912, Colonel House suggested Henry Morgenthau as
Ambassador to Turkey; Wilson replied, ‘There ain’t going to be no Turkey,’
to which House rejoined, ‘Then let him go look for it.’” Evans, United States
Policy, p. 29.
Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy 127

colonial rule. In other words, the Sublime Porte had given up any
remaining hope of countering European power, and was now looking
to prolong its own existence under any conditions.
The Ottoman Army was disbanded by the Armistice. In the
meantime, local resistance movements started popping up around
Anatolia. Through some clever maneuvering, Mustafa Kemal, 55 who
had resigned from his post in the Ottoman Army, managed to take
control of the umbrella council of resistance movements, and brought
all the militia in the various battlefronts under his leadership in the
last quarter of 1919. It was also around this time that he fi rst met
with the Bolsheviks, and got some guarantee of support from them by
implying that an independent Turkey might be friendly to commun-
ism.56 The Treaty of Kars, declaring mutual friendship, was signed in
1921, in effect shutting down the Eastern Front.
The British pressured the Istanbul government of the Sultan to
delegitimize the resistance movements of Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal
and all those who joined him were declared traitors by the Istanbul
government. In response, Mustafa Kemal argued that the Sultan was
a prisoner of Western powers, and that a legitimate government could
only be formed in unoccupied areas. He called all of his supporters
to Ankara. When the Ottoman Parliament issued a decree in sup-
port of Kemal, the British forces took official control of Istanbul, dis-
solved the Parliament and arrested any representative who had not yet
fled the city (March 1920). This was a strategic mistake on the part
of the British. Soon after, on April 23, the nationalists opened their
own assembly in Ankara, and Mustafa Kemal was able to claim that,
since the Ottoman Parliament had been closed unconstitutionally, the
Ankara Assembly was the true representative of Turkish people. He
further grounded the Ankara government’s legitimacy by appealing
to the Islamic world for support. He argued that the Anatolian resist-
ance movement was trying to save the Caliph from Western hands.57
Because the Ottoman Empire had mostly depleted her resources
during the protracted wars of the early twentieth century, 58 the
Anatolian resistance could not count on any local funds in its

55
Having previously made a name for himself as a great soldier in the quashing
of the infamous March 31st rebellion, when the fundamentalist mobs tried to
sack the Sultan, and also in the famous Battle of Gallipoli during World War I.
56 57
Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle. Aydemir, Tek Adam.
58
Italian invasion of Tripoli; the two Balkan Wars; World War I.
128 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

battles against the occupying armies. The military expenditures

were fi nanced partly by the Bolsheviks59 and friendly Asian Muslim
groups.60 Throughout the war, Mustafa Kemal continued to reaffi rm
the Ankara government’s trust in and friendship with the Bolshevik
cause: “Both armies are fighting to end the intrusion of capitalist
Europe into Asia. Therefore, the two armies are united in cause and
purpose. One of them has ensured the victory of the red banner of
revolution, and the other has protected the dignity of the red Turkish
flag.”61 During the Independence War, the British regarded this alli-
ance as a marriage of convenience.62 They were more concerned with
how their support of Greece versus Turkey was being perceived in
India.63
The Turks were able to organize an army strong enough to con-
vince the French and the Italians to withdraw without much fight-
ing. Since the Eastern Front was closed after the Treaty of Kars, the
Ankara government was able to concentrate all of its forces in the
Western Front, and defeat the Greek forces after several battles in

59
A report by the British Secret Intelligence Service, Constantinople Branch
(April 21, 1922):
The Financial Position of the Angora Government: … In drawing up the new
budget, the Finance Department of the Angora Government had made a special
effort to make it appear moderate and the total expenditure was estimated
at 25 million liras Turkish. This amount, it was estimated, would be covered
by gold to the value of 2 millions which had been promised by the Ukrainian
Government. Taxes were expected to produce ten million Turkish liras, and
the balance of five millions was to be covered by special war contributions
including the contribution imposed upon every village and district. Şimşir,
İngiliz Belgelerinde.
60
M. M. H. J. Chotani, President of Central Khilafet Committee, Bombay, sent
50,000 pounds to Angora through Netherland Bank (February 18, 1922);
Mr. A. H. S. Khatri, Hon. Gen. Sec. Cent. Khilafet Committee Bombay,
wrote that 90,000 pounds were already sent, and another 10,000 were on
the way (September 14, 1922). Şimşir, Homage.
61
Bolluk, Kurtuluş Savaşı’nın, p. 113.
62
See the memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs respecting
intervention between Greece and Turkey in Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.
It was after the war had been concluded, and both the Ankara and the
Bolshevik governments had shown their staying power, that the British grew
more concerned about the durability of this alliance.
63
See for example debates in the House of Commons and speech of the Prime
Minister Mr. Lloyd George on British Near Eastern Policy (April 8, 1922) in
Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.
Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy 129

1921 and 1922.64 Greece withdrew all of her soldiers from Anatolia
in the course of weeks, and the British remained the only occupy-
ing power with her continued presence in Constantinople. The two
sides sat down in Mudanya to negotiate an armistice. In the mean-
time, Greece continued withdrawing and left Eastern Thrace under
Turkish control. Mustafa Kemal indicated to the Western powers
that Turks were willing to fight until all territories with a Turkish
majority were under their control.65 An armistice was signed in
October 1922.

The last of the Ottomans and the birth of modern

Turkey (1922–1923)
“İsmet,” Lord Curzon said, “You remind me very much of a music box.
You play the same old melody every single day, until you make us all
ill: Sovereignty, Sovereignty, Sovereignty …” (From the memoirs of Joseph
C. Grew, American observer at Lausanne)

The Ankara government had most of its terms accepted at the Mudanya
Armistice and had recaptured control of most of the Anatolian ter-
ritories occupied after World War I. By contrast, the Istanbul gov-
ernment had shown no willingness to fight the occupation and had
sabotaged most resistance efforts. The Istanbul government had
therefore lost all legitimacy. The Parliament in Ankara abolished the
Sultanate on November 1, 1922, and declared Turkey a republic. The
last Sultan, Mehmed Vahdeddin, and all the remaining members of
the Ottoman dynasty left Istanbul on a British military ship. The office
of the Caliphate was separated from the Sultan and was retained for
the time being. The British forces remained in Constantinople until
the Lausanne Treaty recognizing the new borders of modern Turkey
was signed in 1923.

64
In the meantime, the Istanbul government signed the Treaty of Sevres. The
treaty left Turks only the middle part of Anatolia that had not come under
any occupation. The Ankara government refused to recognize the treaty,
claiming that the Istanbul government was no longer authorized to sign
treaties and that the Turkish Parliament would have to ratify the treaty for it
to be binding.
65
As enumerated in the National Pact, which was contained in the last decree
of the Ottoman Parliament. The current borders of Turkey coincide with the
National Pact, minus Mosul and Western Thrace, plus Antioch.
130 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

The conference for the peace treaty was convened in Lausanne

on November 20, 1922. Mustafa Kemal had sent his second-in-
command, İsmet Pasha, as the chief negotiator. The Western powers
were in for a surprise: İsmet Pasha made it clear from the start that
Turkey would accept nothing less than equal treatment. This was not
what the Western powers had in mind. For instance, French news-
papers cautioned prior to the conference that while the capitulations
should be lifted eventually, the Turkish courts were not yet up to par
with their European counterparts and that no decisions should be
taken in haste.66 The British delegation seemed confident that it was
going control the negotiations throughout the conference.67
İsmet Pasha was aware of the fact that, despite the recent military
victories, the Western powers respected neither the new Ankara gov-
ernment nor Turkey. Therefore, he started the conference with a sig-
nificant symbolic gesture. After Lord Curzon, the head of the British
delegation, had made a speech welcoming all the delegates, İsmet
Pasha stood up, and gave a long-winded speech himself.68 In the early
days of the conference, İsmet Pasha made it known that Turkey would
no longer put up with capitulations, nor would she accept any foreign
interference in domestic affairs: “Turkey is a nation that wants auton-
omy … Foreign populations and their property, foreign rights are
guaranteed under the public laws of Turkey.”69 Ironically, it was the
Japanese delegate, Hayachi, who most vehemently opposed Turkish
demands for the lifting of capitulations. Hayachi told İsmet Pasha that
Japan, too, had suffered from capitulations, and so he sympathized
with Turkish demands. However, not even in Japan had the capitula-
tions been lifted before the implementation of necessary administrative
and legal reforms.70 İsmet Pasha was not persuaded by this argument;
he said that there was no possibility of Turkey agreeing to keep the
capitulations when they were not being utilized “even in Greece or

66 67
Karacan, Lozan, p. 59. Ibid., p. 50.
68
Joseph C. Grew reports that this made a very bad impression, but as the
conference went on, he would grow to respect İsmet Pasha to the degree that
he personally pushed for a unilateral agreement between the United States and
the Ankara government. See Grew, Turbulent Era; Grew, Lozan Günlüğü.
69
Karacan, Lozan, p. 131.
70
Goffman, Stigma, p. 107: “The stigmatized individual exhibits a tendency to
stratify his ‘own’ according to the degree to which their stigma is apparent
and obtrusive. He can then take up in regard to those who are evidently more
stigmatized than himself the attitudes normals take to him.”
Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy 131

the Balkan countries.”71 He further argued that Turkey saw no justice

in an international system that would spare former Ottoman territor-
ies such as Greece from capitulations and would implement them in
Turkey. He said, “We came to this conference because it was guar-
anteed we would be treated as equals. However, we are constantly
faced with demands that would impugn our independence. No sover-
eign nation, not even Greece, has faced these sorts of demands! The
Turkish nation, before anybody, is entitled and has the right to be
treated as other sovereign nations.”72 It was the constant refrain of the
Turkish delegation during the conference that the Turkish laws were
up to European standards and that there was no need for intervention
in Turkish domestic affairs. The conference had reached an impasse.
An editorial in The Times argued on December 29, 1922: “Either the
Turks will accept the reasonable demands before them and secure the
necessary support for the development of their country, or they will
relegate Turkey into the position of a completely isolated country in
an Asian desert.” Despite these gloomy predictions, the Turkish dele-
gation would not accept anything less than full sovereign equality.73
The conference proceedings were suspended in February 1923.
Even after the proceedings were resumed in April, there were some
glitches. The British wanted to keep the High Commission of Health
in Istanbul operational, arguing that for the last 70 years it had kept
contagious diseases out of Europe. İsmet countered that the right
place for this commission was either Arabia or India; that Turkey had
established a perfect medical system during the war and that Turkish
medical schools were on a par with their European counterparts.74
When the treaty was signed on October 2, 1923, Turkey had forced

71
Karacan, Lozan, pp. 133–4; italics added.
72
Ibid., p. 198; italics added.
73
From Joseph C. Grew’s memoirs, February 5, 1923:
Child, Bristol and I were almost immediately in Lord Curzon’s chambers …
Curzon suddenly appeared; he rushed into the room like an angry bull, gave
us a sideways glance, and started pacing around, shaking his fists into the
air. He was sweating profusely while he looked us up and down. He started
yelling: “We sat here for four fatal hours and İsmet responded to everything
we said with the same tired refrain: Independence and Sovereignty. We did
everything we could. Even Bombard shook his fist and told İsmet that what
he was doing amounted to war provocation.”
74
Karacan, Lozan, p. 231. Also, here we see an example of the identification of
Asia/East with disease.
132 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

Western powers to agree to most of her demands.75 An American

reporter with a penchant for hyperbole observed that the West had
never bowed so low before the East.76

A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938)

It was not clear from the outset what direction the Ankara government
would take after sovereign recognition. One possibility the Western
powers feared was that it would try to influence the Asian Muslims by
using the power of the Caliphate. Another distasteful possibility for
the West was that it would adopt communism, as had been implied
and promised during the Independence War. The fi rst of these fears
was soon put to rest.

Turkey’s relations with the “East”: 1923–1938

As noted in the previous section, the Ankara government enjoyed
widespread support from the Muslim world throughout the years of
the Independence War. Once the fi nal battle had been won, Ankara
was flooded with telegrams77 of congratulations and visits from rep-
resentatives of Muslim communities around the world.78 The corres-
pondence during and in the immediate aftermath of the Independence

75
Article 28: Each of the High Contracting Parties hereby accepts, in so far as
it is concerned, the complete abolition of the Capitulations in Turkey in every
respect.
76
Atay, Çankaya, p. 338. On the same page, Atay also reports that on seeing the
Turkish Army enter Istanbul, Lt. Armstrong said: “I hear my spirit rebelling.
Turks think they are in Suleiman the Magnificent’s times. It hurt my pride to
see the British Empire’s honor soiled in the mud before all of Asia.”
77
A few examples: Letter from the President of the Khilafat Committee
(September 10, 1922) – “Following resolution passed meeting of Delhi citizens
tender hearty congratulations to Kemalists on their decisive victory in Asia
Minor”; Letter from the President of the Khilafat Committee (November 10,
1922) – “Convey to Ghazi Mustafa Kemal and mujahidin on behalf of Sind
Moslems heartiest congratulations on their brilliant victory …”; Letter from
Indian Community of Johannesburg (September 14, 1922) – “Indians both
Muslims and Hindus in South Africa congratulate you, your colleagues and
your brave noble invincible army for having saved the honour of Islam by
the valour of your selfless and Islamic spirit in having vindicated the cause of
righteousness …”; for more letters from communities in Bombay, Shahjanpur,
Surat, Balliasub, Ballia, and others, see Şimşir, Homage, pp. 13–21.
78
“Debates in the HoC and Speech of the PM Mr. Lloyd George in British
Near Eastern Policy (4/8/1922): Lt. Comm. Kenworthy: … In Angora, which
A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938) 133

War is marked by two themes: that Turks were fighting in the name of
Islam, and that Turks were fighting against colonial intrusion. Both
were considered righteous causes.79
However, relations started cooling off when Muslim representa-
tives in Ankara became aware of the Turkish discussions to abolish
the Caliphate. Perhaps because the Ankara government needed the
support of Muslim communities during the negotiations in Lausanne,
the office of the Caliph was spared when the office of the Sultanate
was abolished in 1922 and Turkey proclaimed a republic in 1923.
Ankara continued to attract and inspire representatives of Eastern
communities.80 In the fi rst couple of years after the military victory,
there were even those who came to declare their official loyalty to
the Ankara government81 or proposed that Mustafa Kemal should
become the new Caliph.82
Nevertheless, the Turkish Parliament, with Kemal’s prodding, voted
to end the office of the Caliphate on March 3, 1924. The reasons for

is now the capital of the Turkish nationalists, there is a representative of

every Moslem community in the world …” Mustafa Kemal is interviewed by
the owner of Islamic News, Indian Reporter Abdulkayyum Malik
(26/8/ 1923): “Us Turks are grateful for the services of our Indian
brethren who have helped us through the darkest of times.” Şimşir, İngiliz
Belgelerinde, p. 329.
79
And not just by Muslims either:
Report of the British Consul at Sarajevo to Sir C.A. Young (Belgrade)
25/9/1922: … on Sept 12th the following passage occurred in the ‘Hrvatska
Sloga,’ an organ of the Croatian Peasant Party. “In Kemal the World sees the
protagonist of a nation struggling for existence. The sufferings of the Turks
fi nd sympathy in the hearts of all the Oppressed. We greet Kemal’s victory
with joy, not only because many Croatians are Muslims, but because it is the
triumph of truth over evil, of law over lawlessness, of the national spirit over
imperialism and oppression”
In Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde. See also “Extract from the ‘Jugoslawski
List’ (pro-Government Organ in Yugoslavia) of September 15th, 1922,” in
Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.
80
The Westminster Gazette, July 9, 1923, in Yılmaz, İngiliz, p. 69.
81
“Extract from the minutes of Kemal’s meeting with Upmal, representative
from Moscow (1/1/1921): Mustafa Kemal: The Yemenis … came here as
the subjects of the Ottoman Empire and declared their trust in the Ankara
government. I told them that we did not want their servitude. I instructed
them to organize around a popular sovereignty movement and maybe after
that we could discuss a federation. Yes, there is a nationalist government
in Baghdad. They, too, came to me for assistance. Because we do not have
enough resources to support them at the moment, I dispatched a small
battalion to Mosul for motivational support …” in Şimşir, Homage.
82
Atay, Çankaya, p. 377.
134 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

this controversial move83 will be discussed later in more detail. Let

us note at this point that in British newspapers this decision was con-
sidered a strategic mistake on the part of Turkey. Both The Times
and The Economist were under the impression that this was going to
hurt Turkey’s relations with the Sunni Muslim community and also
with Muslim states that had been admirers of the new Ankara gov-
ernment, such as Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq.84 In the end, while
relations with the Muslim communities under British control almost
disappeared, Turkey managed to establish friendly relations with sov-
ereign Muslim states.85
Afghanistan had gained her independence from Britain in 1919, and
was one of the fi rst states, along with the Soviet Union, to recognize
the Ankara government with a friendship treaty. The treaty acknowl-
edged the awakening of Eastern nations against imperialism.86 Iran
also quickly established diplomatic relations with Turkey. During the
1920s, their mutual friendship was reaffi rmed with several treaties. In
1935, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq came together to sign a tripartite treaty,
and were later joined by Afghanistan. Two years later, the Sadabad
Pact87 was signed. The parties recognized each other’s sovereignty
and promised to consult others in matters of common concern and to
take any disputes to the League of Nations.

83
“General Review of the British Secret Intelligence Service Information
During the Period April–August, 1922: … it is noteworthy that a number of
delegates from Moslem countries, who assembled at Angora earlier in the
year to discuss a scheme to convoke a Pan-Islamic conference, refused to
participate in such a conference on discovering that one of its objectives was
to discuss changes in the Khalifat.” Şimşir, Homage, p. 71, 74.
84
The Times, March 5, 1924; The Economist, March 8, 1924, in Yılmaz,
İngiliz.
85
After Mustafa Kemal’s death in 1938, he was deeply praised throughout the
Muslim world, e.g.:
Press interview with Jinnah, President, All India Muslim League: He was
the greatest Mussalman in the modern Islamic world and I am sure that
the entire Mussalman world will deeply mourn his passing away. It is
impossible to express adequately in a press interview one’s appreciation of
his remarkable and varied services, as the builder and the maker of Modern
Turkey and an example to the rest of the world, especially to the Mussalman
states in the Far East. The remarkable way in which he rescued and built
up his people against all odds, has no parallel in the history of the world.
(Şimşir, Homage, 204)
86
Dilan, Türkiye’nin, p. 73.
87
The pact became moot after Iran was invaded in World War II.
A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938) 135

Turkey’s relations with the Balkans88 took a similarly peaceful turn

soon after 1923. Turkey signed a friendship treaty with Albania in
1923 and with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in 1925. Friendly relations
with Greece were also established.89 The fi rst Balkan Conference was
convened on October 5, 1930, with Albania, Bulgaria, Romania,
Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Greece in attendance. The attendees issued a
joint declaration recommending the formation of a Balkan Pact. War
between the members of the Balkan Pact would be prohibited; eco-
nomic, social, cultural, and political cooperation would be encour-
aged. The second Balkan Conference took place in October 1931, and
Turkey took an active role in trying to maintain the status quo in the
Balkans.90 In the next two conferences, Turkey and Greece cooperated
to curb the revisionist aims of Bulgaria. In 1933, Turkey and Greece
signed the Pacte d’Entente Cordiale. The sides agreed to respect each
other’s borders, to consult each other in international disputes, and
to protect each other’s interests in international conferences (by pos-
sibly sending a common representative). Turkey signed cooperation
treaties with Romania and Yugoslavia in 1933 as well. These three
treaties formed the basis of the Balkan Pact, from which Albania and
Bulgaria were excluded. The Balkan Entente was formed in 1934 and
operated successfully91 until 1936. After 1937, the actions of Germany
and Italy in Eastern Europe brought about the dissolution of the pact,
despite Turkey’s efforts. The pact had its last meeting in 1940.

Ankara–Moscow relations: 1923–1938

As noted in the previous sections, when the Republic of Turkey was
proclaimed in 1923, relations between Moscow and Ankara were as
close as they had ever been. The two sides remained relatively friendly
in the interwar period. Tevfi k Rüştü Aras, Minister of Foreign Affairs
from 1925 to 1938, wrote in his memoirs: “The friendship between
Turkey and the USSR came out of the interwar period even stronger

88
Though the Balkans are not really East, at this time in history they were not
really West either. Toynbee considered the Balkan states to be part of the
“Near East.”
89
Discussions of a Turkish–Greek “EU” in the late 1920s. See Clark, Twice a
Stranger, p. 201.
90
Dilan, Türkiye’nin, p. 89.
91
Acting together during Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and also during the
Montreux Conference over the status of the Straits.
136 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

for the trials imposed by the unexpected, chaotic developments of the

international system.”92 While this friendship was a significant con-
tributing factor to Turkish independence in 1923, it is hard to believe
that Moscow would agree with Aras’s optimistic assessment; this was
a “friendship” that gave the Bolsheviks much less than they bargained
for. In fact, throughout the interwar years, the ties between the two
states gradually decayed and completely snapped after World War II.
As previously discussed, during the Independence War, members
of the Ankara government frequently hinted that they were going to
adopt socialism once they were fully sovereign.93 They even promised
to use the seat of the Caliph94 to help the Bolshevik designs in foreign
relations. When Mustafa Kemal sent Tevfi k Rüştü Aras to Moscow
on a diplomatic mission, he told Aras: “If the world does not recog-
nize us, we will unite with the communists, and fi nd our place in the
new world order. But under no conditions will we ever accept foreign

92
Aras, Atatürk’ün, p. 33.
93
“From the editorial of Hakime-i Milliye, the official organ of the Ankara
Government (8 March 1921): … We will adopt most principles of socialism
without giving up our national administration. For example, we will
gradually nationalize factories. We will increase public ownership for the
benefit of the people. In other words, we will become state socialists …”;
“Mustafa Kemal: … faced with the ominous possibility of losing our country
to British colonialism, if the practical application of Bolshevik principles
offer salvation, we might need to adopt those principles regardless of how
difficult it might be to implement them …”; “Letter from Mustafa Kemal to
Ttcherin: … It is my sincere belief and that of my compatriots that once the
Western proletariat on the one hand, and the enslaved Asian and African
peoples, on the other hand, figure out how the international capital exploits
them for maximum profit and tricks them into killing and enslaving each
other, and once they know in their hearts that colonization policies amount
to murder, that day will be the last day of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie.”
Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle, p. 407.
94
Extract from the transcript of the meeting between Mustafa Kemal and
Comrade Esba, the Propaganda and Action Officer for the Eastern Peoples
(January 29, 1921):
“If we gain control of the Caliph, we can use him as a weapon to unite
all the Muslim People against the West. This issue also requires the
reinterpretation of Islamic ideas so that they do not contrast with the
principles of revolution. I think that once all the Muslim states gain their
independence and taste popular sovereignty, their devotion to the Caliph
will disappear … Us Turks are among the most mistreated peoples of the
world. Therefore, the International [sic] can count on our support. With our
struggle against Western imperialism, we support the 3rd International’s
[sic] ideas in action.” Ibid.
A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938) 137

intervention. We are sincere in this promise; this is not a game.”95

The Bolsheviks returned Mustafa Kemal’s enthusiasm by giving the
Anatolian resistance military and monetary support. Furthermore,
they lobbied for Ankara’s inclusion in international conferences.96
After the Republic was proclaimed, the Ankara government did
not adopt socialism, preferring a mixed economy in state planning.
In foreign relations, however, the two states remained close at fi rst.
Turkey consulted with the Soviet Union over important foreign policy
decisions, such as the decision to join the League of Nations in 1932.
However, by the 1930s, these relations had started to show signs of
strain.
Soviet emissaries reported97 the repeated pronouncements of
Mustafa Kemal that the two regimes should become more similar.
However, by the 1930s, the Republic of Turkey had been around
for almost a decade and had not yet delivered on any of its substan-
tial promises to Moscow. A telegram by the Soviet Ambassador in
November 1933 expresses his suspicion that Turkey was using the
Soviet card to strengthen her power in the West and to improve her
standing in the Balkans.98 A meeting between the Soviet Representative
Comrade Karahan and Mustafa Kemal on November 29, 1935, was
symptomatic of this tension in the relationship. In his top-secret report
to Stalin, Comrade Rozengolts relayed the following scene from this
meeting:

Kemal … asked why he was not congratulated on the anniversary of Turkish

independence … Karahan reminded him of the congratulatory telegram sent
by Comrade Kalinin. Kemal, with a resentful voice, said “Yes, I am aware
of that and have even replied to it, but I am not talking about messages
brought by middlemen. I am not only the President of Turkey, but also the
leader of the Turkish People.” And looking at Karahan, he asked: “Who is
your leader?” Karahan replied that Comrade Stalin was our leader. “Then
why did he not send me the telegram personally? Everybody else did. He
is trying to show that he does not want to recognize me.” Karahan told
him that it was not acceptable for Comrade Stalin to send congratulatory

95 96
Aras, Atatürk’ün, p. 205. Ibid.
97
Telegram from Soviet Ambassador Astahov to People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Relations (April 3, 1933) in Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle.
98
Telegram from Soviet Ambassador Astahov to People’s Commissariat of
Foreign Relations (November 10, 1933). Ibid.
138 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

messages … Kemal, still resentful, told him that he was a great friend of the
Soviet Union, that this friendship would continue as long as he lived, but
that he would honor this friendship only if it was a relationship of equals,
that the middlemen hurt all this … [Karahan tried to reassure him] …
Kemal interrupted Karahan …: “I will accept this friendship only if there
are equal relations; I will not accept any other kind. You might have a
powerful and well-equipped army, but I am not afraid of it. I am not afraid
of anybody in this world, you included …”

Both sides had stopped trusting each other. In October 1939, Turkey
signed a mutual cooperation treaty with Britain and France about
which Moscow was very displeased. The treaty marked the de facto
end of the friendship between the Soviet Union and Turkey, only a
year after Mustafa Kemal’s death.

European views regarding modern Turkey

After the Lausanne Conference, relations between Turkey and Western
powers, especially Britain, were lukewarm. First, there was the unset-
tled dispute over the status of the Mosul province.99 Second, Western
observers were skeptical of the domestic reforms the Ankara govern-
ment was pushing through in Turkey at great speed. Diplomatic rela-
tions would not be improved until after the settlement of the Mosul
question in 1926. Perceptions about the durability of Turkish reforms
also started to change toward the 1930s.
After the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, the Ankara gov-
ernment started pushing drastic reforms in every aspect of life in
Turkey. These changes were meant to help Turkey join the commu-
nity of “civilized nations.” Originally, the European press were skep-
tical of these reforms, especially because they were being imposed
from above. In the early years, it is possible to see two kinds of views
reflected in the press and books about Turkey. The fi rst view argued

99
Britain claimed that Mosul province belonged to Iraq – a British mandate –
for geographical and strategic reasons. Turkey argued that the province
had a Turkish majority and, therefore, belonged in Turkey. The League of
Nations recommended that the Mosul province stay with Iraq at least for a
25-year mandate period and asked that the Kurds in the region be given some
local autonomy. One day after the Mosul decision of the League of Nations
Council, Turkey signed a new friendship treaty with Moscow. See e.g. Dilan,
Türkiye’nin, p. 38.
A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938) 139

that modernization efforts would not succeed100 and that Mustafa

Kemal was being oppressive and authoritarian101 in his efforts; the
second, friendlier view thought that Turkey should be congratulated
for trying102 (again with the implication that the reforms would likely
fall short).103 The British press in general viewed Turkey’s foreign pol-
icy before the settlement of the Mosul dispute as revisionist and no
different than the strategy of the Young Turks.104 That judgment sof-
tened somewhat after the Ankara Treaty resolving the Turkey–Iraq
border dispute.
For instance, the Daily Telegraph (December 31, 1927) noted that
the new Turkey had full independence and was pleased about its mili-
tary prestige. However, according to the Telegraph, Turkey wanted
more, because Turkey had become the leader of an Asian movement
that resisted European influence and it claimed full equality with
Europe. Moreover, Turkey wanted her leadership to be recognized by
the Muslim world. The Times, on the other hand, was of the opin-
ion that Turkey had already attained a special place between Europe
and Asia thanks to her own efforts. Turkey was perceived in Asia as
an ambassador of Western European civilization. In the meantime,
Europe, The Times said, admired, with some reservations, what the
country had accomplished.105 The eminent British historian Arnold
Toynbee concurred: “The fundamental fact in modern Turkish his-
tory is that the Turks, starting from an historical background and a
social system far removed from ours, have latterly been coming on to
our ground as fast as it has been humanly possible for them to travel
over the rough country that intervenes.”106
By the 1930s, the coverage in Europe regarding Turkey had become
even more positive. For instance, in 1930, the Contemporary Review
argued that Turkey and Japan were the most modern countries of
Asia. In an article published on November 2, 1933, Near East and
India observed that Turkey had made the transition from the Middle

100
The Spectator (March 8, 1924); The Spectator (August 5, 1925) in Yılmaz,
İngiliz, pp. 75, 78.
101
The Morning Post (July 23, 1926). Ibid, p. 79.
102
The Times (October 17, 1925). Ibid, p. 77.
103
See ibid. for other examples and a detailed discussion of trends. Also see
Toynbee and Ross, “Modernisation of the Middle East,” for a discussion
among British scholars about the developments in Turkey.
104
Yılmaz, İngiliz, p. 157. 105 July 25, 1928, p. 13.
106
Toynbee, Turkey, p. 8.
140 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

Ages to modernity in only a decade, and that now Turkey was a strong
“border guard” in the Near and Middle East. Indeed, throughout
the 1930s, Turkey was seen as a devoted facilitator of international
peace.107 In 1937, The Morning Post108 declared Turkey to be the most
peaceful country in Europe. Thus, by the time of Atatürk’s death
in November 1938, the days when Lord Balfour called Atatürk the
“most terrible of all the terrible Turks”109 and deemed Turkey a coun-
try of brigands110 were in the past.

The League of Nations

Despite the unfavorable rulings of the League of Nations on mat-
ters concerning Turkey in the 1920s,111 Turkey accepted the League’s
invitation to join in the work of the Preparatory Commission for the
Disarmament Conference in 1928. Turkey also ratified the Briand–
Kellogg Pact in 1929, participated in the International Opium
Convention, and implemented several humanitarian and legal mea-
sures recommended by the League.112 Having established such friendly
relations with the League, a question arose in the early 1930s as to
why Turkey had not joined the League. In 1931, the view expressed
by Foreign Affairs Minister Aras was that Turkey could not join the
League yet, because it was not clear if Turkey could be a member
of the Council of the League of Nations: this situation violated the
equal rights and treatment principle that had been the cornerstone
of Turkish policy since independence. A year later, however, Aras
observed that Turkey would be happy to join the League if it was

107
The Times, October 29, 1932, p. 9; Daily Telegraph, December 1, 1933,
p. 21; The Listener, November 29, 1933, p. 820; The Economist, April 8,
1936, p. 122; Fortnightly Review, v141, March 1937, pp. 328–9; in Yılmaz,
İngiliz.
108
March 24, 1937, p. 12.
109
Time Magazine (November 21, 1938): Obituary of Atatürk.
110
Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”
111
In this period, Turkey viewed the League with great suspicion. See
e.g. extract from Isaac F. Marcosson’s Mustafa Kemal interview, Saturday
Evening Post (July 13, 1923): “Mustafa Kemal: The biggest mistake of the
League is its separation of nations into those who have the right to rule
and those who deserve to be ruled over.” In Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle. The
main points of contention were: the population exchange issue; the “Etabli”
problem; and the Mosul dispute. See Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”
112
Here’s an example of how such reforms were received:
Shaping modern Turkey 141

thought that Turkish foreign policy was compatible with the League’s
principles.
Following Aras’s suggestion, the Special July Session of the League
of Nations Assembly unanimously voted to invite Turkey to join. All
the members spoke in favor of admitting Turkey, emphasizing the
country’s strategic importance between Europe and Asia.113 Thus,
Turkey was elected to the Council in 1934 and became a very active
member, committed to keeping the status quo and peace in Europe.
After Turkey joined the League in 1932, she entered a rapproche-
ment period with the Western powers, especially Britain and France.
Britain supported Turkey in the Montreux Conference in 1936, and
helped settle the question of the status of the Straits in Turkey’s favor.
The same year, King Edward VIII visited Istanbul and signed a trade
agreement. As the situation in Europe grew tense in 1938, Turkey
started negotiating alliances with Britain and France. Finally, despite
Germany’s threats of withholding products and credit from Turkey,
a tripartite agreement was signed in 1939, which put Turkey in the
Allied camp.

Shaping modern Turkey

Turkey lost 85 percent of its territories and 75 percent of its popula-
tion between 1870 and 1920.114 This fact and the experience of the
Ottoman Empire with the intervention of Western powers in domes-
tic affairs had two effects on the Turkish mindset after 1923: a dis-
cernible paranoia about territorial integrity and a strong desire to be
respected in the international system. In the interwar period, these
two attitudes were – and had to be – intimately connected. However,
in the beginning Turks themselves were divided on how best to achieve
the status the country so desired.

“One other example of progress is that Japan has just raised her marriage
age to sixteen, and Turkey has raised her marriage age to fi fteen for boys
and girls. That is not at all a bad example for certain European countries,
who retain the marriage age of twelve, comforting themselves with the
reflection that marriages at such an age very seldom take place, quite
forgetting the effect their example may have on smaller or less civilized
countries.” Crowdy, “Humanitarian Activities,” 161 (italics added).
113
Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”
114
Ottoman Archives.
142 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

In the fi rst session of the Turkish Parliament during the Independence

War, there were three main divisions in the Assembly. The largest
group, headed by Mustafa Kemal, favored a pragmatic approach,
negotiating with both the West and Russia as conditions required.
A second group favored Eastward expansion. The smallest group
wanted Turkey to become an active influence in the Turkic Republics
of Central Asia, with Moscow’s assistance.115 These groups roughly
corresponded to the three dominant ideological movements in the late
Ottoman Empire: Turkish nationalism with selective Westernization
(i.e. the Japanese model), Pan-Islamism, and Pan-Turanism. Mustafa
Kemal rejected both Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turanism because he
found their aspirations unrealistic.116
After the military victory, the main division in the Parliament
regarding domestic policy was between, on the one hand, those who
favored keeping the old Ottoman system, either entirely or partially
intact, and, on the other, those who favored adopting a new, Western
system.117 In the end, the Westernizing forces won out. There are
two reasons for this: fi rst, Mustafa Kemal’s personal influence; and
second, the fact that the Westernizing camp made a more compelling
case, given Turkey’s previous experience in the international system
and the contemporary standards of international society.
In mainstream approaches to history in Turkey, Mustafa Kemal
(Atatürk) gets almost exclusive credit as the driving force behind
Turkish domestic reforms. While exaggerated, this view has some
basis in reality. Atatürk had consolidated his power as the leader
of the new Turkish nation during the Independence War. The war-
time Parliament made him executive-in-chief and gave him wide
latitude in his powers. After the Republic was established, he was
elected President. Leaving aside assassination attempts and two
brief forays into a multi-party system, Atatürk did not face substan-
tial opposition. Therefore, the fact that he personally was commit-
ted to Westernization, and that most of these reforms were planned
and implemented by him personally, is important in explaining why
Turkey chose the path of Westernization.

115
Report of the General Officer Commanding in Chief, Allied Forces,
Constantinople; No. C.R.A.F. 543, October 5, 1921, in Şimşir, İngiliz
Belgelerinde.
116 117
Atatürk, Söylev. Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet, p. 34.
Shaping modern Turkey 143

However, Atatürk’s personal biases are not an adequate causal expla-

nation for this choice. First of all, attributing everything to Atatürk’s
power – as the official account in Turkey has been wont to do since his
death – leaves open the question of why Atatürk himself favored this
path. Second, such an account also misses the complexity of Turkish
politics in that era. Atatürk was no Stalin and the early sessions of
the Parliament are notable for lively discussion and debates despite the
absence of formal party structures.118 While the system was not demo-
cratic, Atatürk preferred to rule by persuasion rather than persecution.
This is why, for instance, he drafted The Speech and read it to the
Turkish Parliament over the course of three months. The Speech chron-
icles Atatürk’s motivations, plans, and decisions from the end of World
War I to 1927.119 It is a very detailed account that aimed to justify and
legitimize his actions to his contemporaries and to future generations.
Therefore, we must ask why Atatürk’s audience found the program of
Westernization compelling. Furthermore, they did not merely come on
board; the general population was very much energized by Atatürk’s
program, and continued on the same path even after Atatürk’s death –
so much so that even contemporary Turkey is still marked by the
worldview of the interwar period. They did so because Westernization/
modernization were presented to skeptics and detractors as the only
way to exist and thrive in the international system. In the debates over
and justifications of each of the proposed reforms, there is a common
thread: the Westernization camp always made an intimate connection
between (Western) civilization on the one hand, and autonomy, sov-
ereignty, and power on the other hand. It was argued that a country
could not have the latter without the former.

“There Is Only One Civilization”

In 1923, the idea that all laws and rules should follow the Western
model gained traction not only in the Cabinet (and the Parliament at
large) but also among the leaders of influential groups such as the Türk
Ocakları120 (“The Turkish Hearth”) organization.121 The principle that

118 119
Ibid. Atatürk, Söylev.
120
Türk Ocakları was a neighborhood organization for youth with a clear
purpose of nation-building. Üstel, Türk Ocakları.
121
Atay, Çankaya; Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet; Özer, Osmanlıdan
Cumhuriyete; Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma; Özer, Avrupa Yolunda.
144 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

this was the only way a state could survive in the international system
became the centerpiece of Turkish policy.122
For instance, the Minister of Justice, Mahmut Esat, said in
1924: “The Turkish Nation, who is committed to following the
path to join Modern civilization, cannot modify Modern civiliza-
tion according to its needs; it has to adapt to the demands of this
civilization whatever the cost.”123 Modern civilization, according
to Turkish Westernizers, was based on principles of rationality
and enlightenment. Any Ottoman institution that did not embody
these two principles had to be left behind. The Sultanate had to
go, because it was against the popular will. The Caliphate was an
office that could only exist in a theocratic system – and religion
clearly was not rational,124 so the Caliphate also had to be abol-
ished. Religion had to be forced into the private realm, as it was
in Europe. Religious clothes were banned in public, and religious
schools and organizations were closed. Basically, everything from
the alphabet to the education system, from the civil code to clothing
had to change and become “rational,” “practical,” and “modern,”
just as it was in Europe.125
The noteworthy aspect of the rationalizations for these reforms is
how they were simultaneously grounded in nationalist rhetoric. The
nationalist Türk Ocakları organization was supposed to operate
according to the dual principles of nationalism and Westernization.
Their founder, Hamdullah Suphi, explains this duality:

Türk Ocağı … is progressive and contemporary. [A member] knows

that this organization is an ambassador of the West in the East. Türk
Ocağı … is Westernizing. We only became aware of our Turkishness
when we approached Europeanness, and we will be Turks as long as we
feel European. There is only one civilization though it varies in form.
However, Türk Ocağı aspires to the Western form of civilization.126

122
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 469.
123
Ibid., p. 470.
124
Especially Islam, which, in addition to being non-rational, was also
“Eastern” and “backward.”
125
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 607.
126
Suphi, “Irk ve Milliyet,” 7.
Shaping modern Turkey 145

The same sentiment was echoed in the organization’s activity pro-

gram issued in 1926. The program claimed that Eastern civilization
was in ruins and that Turkey was now an ambassador of the West in
the East.127
Atatürk resorted to similar themes to justify the reforms. In The
Speech, he said that the essential principle was that the Turkish nation
should live with dignity and pride, which could only happen with
full autonomy: “However rich and strong a nation may be, if she is
not fully independent, she will be viewed as a servant by the civilized
people.”128 According to Atatürk, the Ottoman Empire had lost all
dignity and was viewed as a subjugate for this reason.129 Furthermore,
he argued that foreign policy130 had to be compatible with domes-
tic form131 and vice versa.132 Atatürk’s official biographer and friend

127
See Türk Ocakları Mesai Programı in Üstel, Türk Ocakları.
128
Atatürk, Nutuk (Söylev): Belgeler, p. 43.
129
“Atatürk’s briefi ng of the Neue Freie Presse Reporter about the Republic
(22/9/1923): … Suppose you have two men before you; one of them is
rich and has all kinds of vehicles at his disposal; the other is poor and has
nothing in his hands. Apart from this material difference, the latter is no
different or deficient in moral spirit. This is the situation of Turkey against
Europe. Apart from defi ning us as a tribe that is doomed to backwardness,
the West has done everything to hasten our ruin. When West and East
appear to clash, it is best to look toward Europe to fi nd the source of
confl ict.” Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.
130
“Atatürk’s interview with French reporter Maurice Pernot on the eve of the
creation of the New Republic (29/9/1923): There are many countries, but
there is only one civilization; for a nation to progress, it needs to join in this
one and only civilization … We have always walked from the East towards
West. If we seem to have changed our course recently, you must admit that
it was through no fault of our own. You made us do it. However, even if
our bodies are in the East, our opinions look toward the West. We want
to modernize our country. Our only goal is to constitute a modern, and
therefore Western, state in Turkey.” Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.
131
“Gentlemen! Our nation will demonstrate her intrinsic qualities in this new
state and prove that the Republic of Turkey rightfully belongs among the
independent, civilized states of the world.” Atatürk, Söylev, p. 380.
132
“Atatürk’s Speech to Turkish Parliament regarding the Proclamation of the
Republican Regime (29/9/1923): Gentlemen! For centuries our nation has
been victimized and unjustly treated in the East because it was thought that
the Turkish nation was lacking in certain qualities. In the recent years, our
nation has demonstrated, with advancements in education, tendencies and
faculties, that those who passed judgments of Turkey were people easily
deceived by appearances and lacked critical analysis skills. Thanks to the
146 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

Atay remarks that Atatürk did not believe in the mermaid myth.133
Atatürk and the Westernizing camp in the early republican period
were convinced that no problem could be solved without making a
clear choice about which civilization Turkey belonged to. According
to them, Turkey deserved to be independent, autonomous, and well
respected, but fi rst she had to prove this to the world by demonstrat-
ing she was civilized.134
Religion, particularly the fact that Turkey’s was Islam, was seen
as the biggest obstacle to joining “Civilization.” This is the reason
why the Caliphate had to be abolished, despite the costs to Turkey’s
relationships with Muslim communities in India. Those in domestic
politics who were in favor of keeping the Caliphate thought that the
regime could be changed to a theocracy with minimal effort, with
the Parliament acting as an advisory council to the Caliph.135 They
argued that this would put Turkey in a spiritual leadership position in
the world, especially if the Caliph was backed by a Parliament repre-
senting the popular will.136
Atatürk and the Westernizing camp based their argument on two
main points: one, a theocracy could not join the community of civ-
ilization; two, having the Caliph in Turkey would decrease, not
increase, Turkey’s stature.137 Atatürk argued that a Westernized, mod-
ern Turkey that had joined the community of civilization would have
a higher stature in the Muslim world as the messenger/ambassador of
the West and Western values, than would a theocratic state harkening

new regime, it will be even easier for Turkey to prove her qualities to the
civilized world. Turkey will prove with her masterpieces that she deserves the
status she has heretofore occupied in the world.” Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri.
133
Atay, Çankaya, p. 434.
134
“A Speech delivered by Atatürk on the 2nd Anniversary of the Victory
Day (30/8/1924): Gentlemen! Our nation’s goal, our nation’s purpose, is
to be a civilized nation as recognized by the entire world. As you know,
the existence, the worth, the right to independence and sovereignty of
every tribe in the world is correlated with its possession and its ability to
provide products of civilization. If a tribe cannot produce masterpieces
of civilization, they are condemned to live without their independence
and sovereignty. The history of humankind proves this point. Walking on
the path of civilization is a life-or-death matter. Those who falter or turn
back on this path will be doomed to drown under the powerful floods of
civilization.” Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri.
135
Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 449.
136 137
Ibid., p. 456. Atatürk, Söylev, pp. 347–84.
Shaping modern Turkey 147

back to a bygone era.138 It was with this same logic that the religious
lodges were banned. Explaining that decision, Atatürk said:

the Republic of Turkey cannot be a country of dervishes, cult followers and

religious fanatics. The most righteous, the most real cult (path) is the cult
of civilization. Doing what civilization requires and demands is enough to
be human. Leaders of cults will understand the truth of my words and will
immediately shut down their lodges of their own accord, and accept the
fact that their followers have now reached this level of maturity.139

Once religion was forced into the private realm, everything else rem-
iniscent of the old religious order had to follow suit.
Turkish leaders were also of the opinion that one of the main rea-
sons the West had been so prejudicial against Turkey in the past was
because of the difference in costume. Therefore, one of the fi rst reforms
to be implemented had to do with adapting the Turkish costume, for
both women and men, to the European standard. Hats received par-
ticular attention, and the European-style felt hat became the sym-
bol of the new regime.140 Atatürk himself argued that the fez was a
symbol of ignorance, backwardness, fundamentalism, and hatred of
civilization. By throwing it away, Turkey would show that there was
nothing separating the Turkish nation from civilized nations.141
In 1924, the education system was centralized. Subsequently, in
1926, civil law was changed almost entirely, and the new civil code
was modeled on the French and Swiss civil codes. The criminal code
was based on the Italian model. Islamic courts were abolished and
polygamy was banned. The equality of sexes was recognized. In
1928, the new Turkish alphabet was adopted. This was derived from

138
Ibid., p. 392.
139
Kastamonu speech, August 30, 1925, Erüreten, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, p. 86.
140
Law on Wearing Top Hats (Şapka) November 25, 1925 – Preamble, The
reasoning for the law:
“Even though the hat issue is of no real concern on its own, because Turkey
plans to join the family of modern and civilized nations, for us it has special
significance. Until now the fez and the turban were marks segregating
Turkey from other civilized nations. It has become apparent that all civilized
and modern nations have the top hat in common. Our mighty nation will
be a model for everyone by wearing this modern and civilized headpiece as
well.” Ibid., p. 6
141
Atatürk, Söylev, p. 409.
148 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

the Latin alphabet, whereas the old one had used Arabic script. The
lunar Islamic calendar was exchanged for the Western calendar, and
Islamic measurement units were replaced by the metric system. In
1934, legislation introduced Turkish citizens to surnames. Finally, in
1935, women were given the right to vote and compete in elections.
Throughout his tenure, Atatürk personally encouraged women to get
into professions that traditionally were not open to women, including
politics, aviation, and the natural sciences. He also supported Turkish
women’s entry to international beauty pageants,142 with the expressed
purpose of showing the world how civilized Turkish women were
under the new Republic.143

Heads and tails: stigmatization, national habitus, and

sovereignty
Your opinion that Turkey carries an important role in the fate of Eastern
nations is entirely right. I think that Turkey plays an interesting role due to
its geographical location on the borders of the Eastern and Western worlds.
This situation is beneficial on the one hand, but perilous on the other.
Because we are able to stop the spread of Western imperialism to the East,
we have gained sympathy of Eastern peoples who view Turkey as a model.
On the other hand, this situation is dangerous for us because it places the
entirety of the burden of the aggression towards the East on our shoulders.
All of Western hatred is focused on us. Turkey is proud of its position and
is happy to fulfi ll this duty for the East. (Mustafa Kemal, speaking with
Comrade Esba, January 29, 1921)

142
The fi rst beauty pageant in Turkey was organized by the Cumhuriyet
newspaper in 1929. The 1930 pageant was held with the purpose of sending
the winner to the European Beauty Pageant in Paris. The newspaper
claimed that this would show the world how modern Turkey was, how
beautiful Turkish women were, and that Turks belonged to the white
race. A true Turkish beauty would have the following qualities: character,
health, smartly applied make-up, moral aptitude, proper hygiene, a sweet
demeanor, a taste in clothing, sincerity, genuineness, and abstinence from
any exercise or diet that would unnaturally enhance the body, quoted in
Resimli Ay (January 26, 1930). Özer, Avrupa Yolunda, p. 304.
143
The fi rst beauty queen of Turkey was sent to Europe with much fanfare.
The following year’s queen, Keriman Halis, was declared Miss Universe.
Turkey had now proved to the world how “modern” Turkish women were.
Thankfully, after her victory, Turkey took a break from beauty pageants for
several decades.
Heads and tails 149

Turkey now defends the European civilization at the gates of Asia. But at
the same time, Turkey is protecting Asia against all of Europe’s imperialist
desires. (Herbert Melzig, Atatürk)

In the previous section, I explained how, in less than a decade, Turkey

went from being perceived as a great threat to the West, especially
Britain, to a state perceived as committed to peace and order. In the
interwar period, Turkey came to be respected by both the West and
the East for both its foreign policy and domestic reforms, at least
compared to its recent past. It is not possible to explain this outcome
without understanding the significant degree to which the concern
for status in the international system shaped the domestic and foreign
strategies of Turkey after World War I.
In the 1920s, Turkey chose a domestic system because of concerns
over its status in the international system. The choice was made in the
context of a normative ideal that placed a premium on “modernity”
and tied the right to be independent to the level of civilization. Those
domestic choices, in turn, brought Turkey closer to the West in the
1930s. This is not to say that material constraints did not play any
role, but ultimately what tipped the outcome in favor of the West was
Turkey’s obsession with attaining membership in the community of
civilized nations, thereby guaranteeing its independence. Having won
on the battleground against Western powers and their allies, Turkey’s
independence was not in danger because of any threat of military
occupation, but because of its stigmatized status as an outsider in the
international system. This is the condition the Turkish leaders wanted
to rectify.
Turkey sought equal status with the West because the new Turkish
nation’s habitus was shaped by an imperial past. In the case of former
empires, the domestic expectations about international recognition
are especially high, because maintaining ontological security requires
preserving continuity in relationships to the world to the degree that is
possible. Empires have hierarchical worldviews.144 After the nineteenth
century, Turkey’s ontological security was continuously threatened by
not having a prestigious (or “normal”) position in the international
system, and the Ottoman Empire’s defeat and collapse only made this
144
For Turkish views of their place in the Ottoman world, see Bozkurt, Azınlık
Imtiyazları, pp. 60–1; Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 127;
Akçam, Türkiye’yi Yeniden Düşünmek, p. 191.
150 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

problem more acute. As the heir of the Ottoman Empire, the new
regime in Turkey had to justify its legitimacy to a domestic audience
united by the common belief that Turkey should have a higher stature
in the international system, even if they disagreed on the best way to
attain such stature.
As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, the domestic audi-
ence (or at least the intelligentsia) in Turkey was acutely aware that
Europe and the West did not apply status standards to Eastern states
uniformly or objectively. The experience of the Ottoman Empire with
capitulations and foreign interventions on behalf of minorities had
taught the leaders of Turkey that these standards were used to deny
Turkey her sovereign rights and to weaken her material power. In other
words, there was a general sense that the treatment of the Ottoman
Empire in the nineteenth century was unjust and discriminatory. This
belief is evident in all of the arguments of the Turkish delegation at
Lausanne and Turkey’s insistence that all residual institutions of for-
eign presence be removed from the country. Furthermore, stigmatiza-
tion of Turkey was not only something Turkish leaders had dreamed
up as a justification for their failure to stop the empire from unrav-
eling, or as an excuse for their future shortcomings. Turks were very
much aware that a priori nations as discussed by Toynbee (see above,
pp. 120–2) were the number one obstacle to their normal functioning
and ontological security in the international system.
Turkey accepted that it had to prove to the West that it deserved to
belong to the family of civilized nations through actual, visible steps,
but simultaneously asserted that this was a choice Turkey was mak-
ing and, moreover, was capable of making. Turks wanted to believe
that they had been wrongly denied respect in the past for superfi-
cial, not intrinsic, reasons: the stigma of civilizational backwardness
did not reflect an incorrigible defect. The leaders and the population
of Turkey embraced the modernity standards of the early twentieth
century, because implicit in the idea of modernity was the principle
that “the most deserving” would advance.145 Because of the prom-
ise held out by this logic, the content of the normative ideal was not

145
As Bauman also notes, “ethnic-religious-cultural strangers are all too often
tempted to embrace the liberal vision of group emancipation (erasing of a
collective stigma) as a reward for individual efforts of self-improvement and
self-transformation.” Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71.
Heads and tails 151

questioned. Turkish leaders insisted on the moral and intrinsic equal-

ity of the Turkish nation with the West, and presented Turkey’s lower
stature and defeat as resulting from a combination of factors such as
historical happenstance, the fault of the West, and the exaggerated
influence of religion in Ottoman affairs.
The obsession with cosmetic changes, such as the hat law, makes
sense when seen in this light. It was as if Turkey were a man who
intrinsically, naturally, belonged in the family of “civilized nations”
and he was marginalized only because he happened to be wearing
the wrong kind of hat. All of the Westernizing reforms were justified
to the domestic public with the logic that all of the powerful, civi-
lized countries were doing things in this particular way, and that since
Turkey naturally belonged in that group, Turks should also adopt the
same ways. This is exactly the kind of strategy Goffman describes
when he talks about stigmatized individuals “correcting” their dis-
crediting attribute.
As the above discussions make clear, there is no explanation besides
Turkey’s obsession with joining the community of civilized states that
explains the lengths Turkey went to in transforming its domestic sys-
tem. The Caliphate was relinquished because a theocracy was not
compatible with (Western) civilization and principles of modernity.
Turkish women went from the private domain to walking around on
stages in their bathing suits within five years, because Turkey had to
prove that it was a modern state and it did not deserve to be stigma-
tized. Every domestic reform was undertaken with this goal.
Realists argue that material competition produces like units, so
they may attribute Turkey’s transformation to military defeat alone.
However, such an explanation overlooks the fact that in the Turkish
case, the Turkish Army, which would be the main factor in a compe-
tition of material strength, was already modernized to a great extent,
even if it lacked resources. It was the fi rst Ottoman institution to
import European teachers and adopt European standards; German
officers had trained its officers throughout the nineteenth century.
When Turkey won the Independence War in 1922 and the Republic
was created in 1923, the army was the unit most “like” its Western
counterparts. Furthermore, it had proven itself in battle against
unlikely odds. If military competition or security was the only fac-
tor driving Turkish policy, Turkey could have stopped there. There
would have been no need to completely uproot the entire gamut of
152 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

the country’s traditions and institutions. The domestic reforms, as is

made clear in numerous speeches cited above, were very clearly driven
by the quest for stature and civilization.
The choice to socialize, and to pursue socialization to this degree,
was a strategic choice for the new regime: yet it was sustainable
because it promised the domestic society the kind of respect its
national habitus had conditioned it to expect, but could not attain
through military means. The fact that Turkey had come perilously
close to losing its sovereignty meant that the distance to the estab-
lished “old village” was great, and the degree of emulation it had
to go through to prove its right to an equal standing was high. The
dominant norm of sovereignty also required comprehensive changes,
since the modernity standard was a simple abstraction away from the
civilization standard.
Any argument that Turkey’s socialization was an accident or
imposed from outside is mistaken. There were some groups in soci-
ety that had internalized the normative ideal of the international
system, but many people in key places had not. The leaders of the
new regime – notably, Atatürk – were mostly soldiers. They had
Westernized military training and were familiar with European lit-
erature, but had not spent much time in Europe or had any extended
contact with Europeans besides German military officers during
World War I. Very few of them had traveled abroad after 1918.
Despite Atatürk’s quest to gain Turkish entry into “civilization,” it is
clear from his speeches that he was not a particularly fervent admirer
of Europe.146 If the leaders were somewhat skeptical about the nor-
mative demands of Europe, the domestic population was even more
so, many groups preferring their traditional ways. Because Turkey
had won the Independence War and had her terms accepted at the
Lausanne Conference, there were very few foreigners in Turkey after
1923. To sum up, in Turkey’s case, it is not possible to speak of the
146
He liked to drink and he was a womanizer, though he pushed reforms that
he thought were necessary for the country but that he could not personally
adapt to. For instance, it is reported that he would only listen to Turkish
classical and folk music in private, but he diverted Turkey’s entire budget
for the arts into the creation of operas and Western-style music. Similarly,
in public he was a strong force for the equality of women, arguing that a
nation with half of its population behind curtains cannot be civilized: but in
private he was patriarchal. His only marriage was short-lived because Latife
Hanım was too opinionated and outspoken. C|alışlar, Latife Hanım.
Heads and tails 153

socializing influence of “victorious” powers. The decision to com-

pletely Westernize might have been top-down, but it was also organic.
A majority of the reforms were undertaken in the 1920s when Turkey
was almost isolated from the West and her only powerful “friend”
was the Soviet Union. The evidence permits no other interpretation
besides strategic socialization to overcome stigmatization within an
international system that was marked very clearly by an established-
outsider dynamic.
Turkey’s decision to commit itself to a wholehearted Westernization/
modernization/civilization project in its domestic realm is what ulti-
mately brought it closer to the West in terms of military alliances, and
drove it away from the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Turkey’s insistence
on its own sovereign recognition as a civilized nation was the under-
lying principle driving Turkey’s arrangements with Eastern states.
Turkey could have chosen to align herself entirely with the Soviet
Union, and in fact there were strong material incentives to do so.
However, Turkey’s priority was always acceptance and equal treat-
ment by the West. On several occasions, Atatürk said to his colleagues
they would join Moscow if necessary, but he always made it sound
as if this was the less preferable option. The Soviet Union before
World War II was not yet a superpower, but it was more powerful
than Turkey and some of the European states. Why was the Soviet
Union’s friendship and military support not enough for Turkey? The
Soviet Union had been isolated from international society after the
Bolsheviks took over, and aligning with the Soviet Union completely
would mean fi nding a place in a “new world order”; it was unpredict-
able how this world order would rank compared to the existing one.
In addition, the more Turkey wanted to become recognized as a civi-
lized nation and took the steps to bring about this outcome, the closer
it became ideologically to states that the Soviet Union had distanced
itself from. There is also the sense that since the Soviet Union had
taken itself out of this status game, its stature had lessened in the eyes
of Turkey; in the confrontation between Mustafa Kemal and Comrade
Karahan cited above, Mustafa Kemal is not acting as if he is dealing
with a country that is considerably stronger than Turkey. The Soviet
Union at the time was openly claiming the mantle of “Easternness” in
an attempt to challenge the normative power of the established core.
Moscow’s strategy no doubt held some initial appeal for Turkey – the
life of the discreditable requires a much higher degree of information
154 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

management than the life of the discredited. As Goffman observes,

“[A stigmatized individual] can voluntarily disclose himself, thereby
radically transforming his situation from that of an individual with
information to manage to that of an individual with uneasy social
situations to manage.”147 Nevertheless, as Goffman notes, disclosure
requires the willingness to take on uncomfortable encounters – and
the memory of such were much fresher in Turks’ minds in the inter-
war years than they were for the Russians. At some level, therefore,
the Russians’ flaunting of the Eastern label bothered the Turkish lead-
ers and decreased their willingness to be associated with the Soviet
Union: “a person who wishes to conceal his disability will notice
disability-revealing mannerisms in another person. Moreover, he is
likely to resent those mannerisms that advertise the fact of disabil-
ity, for in wishing to conceal his identity he wishes others to conceal
theirs.”148 This would actually establish patterns of treatment that
Turkey would adapt in the future vis-à-vis all “Eastern” nations.
Ultimately, Turkey joined the League of Nations, even though the
League, as an instrument of European power, had not treated Turkey
favorably at all. Turkey worked very hard to maintain the status quo
in the Balkans and the Near East, instead of actively fighting against
Western imperialism, as had been predicted in the early 1920s. While
Turkey was against the mandate regime in principle, she was actu-
ally a transmitter of Western norms into mandated regions. By her
own constant attempts to prove that she deserved to join the com-
munity of civilized, modern nations, Turkey legitimized the norm
that sovereignty was something that needed to be earned, and that
a nation needed to prove itself to the world community before it
could become fully independent. When Turkey encouraged Eastern
nations to organize around popular sovereignty movements and win
their independence, it was because she wanted to lead the way for
the nations of the East. In effect, for all of the anti-imperialist rhet-
oric of the war years, Turkey turned out to be the best emissary for
imperialist norms – if it was possible for Turkey to successfully trans-
form itself, the implication was that there was no inherent structural
problem with civilization standards. Of course, Turkey took it even
further. Under the guise of an “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, Turkey

147 148
Goffman, Stigma, p. 100. Ibid., p. 86.
Conclusion 155

actively encouraged other “outsider” countries to commit to the same

advancement strategy. This strategy should not be taken lightly, for
as Toynbee remarked, Turkey was seen as something of a test case for
Westernization: “in studying the Westernization process in Turkey,
we are increasing our understanding of the human world in which we
ourselves live and move and have our being; for the issues with the
West are confronting other non-Western peoples the world over.”149
The fact that Turkey’s actions ended up affi rming the normative order
of the established-outsider dynamic definitely had something to do
with Turkey’s positive reception by the West in the 1930s.

Conclusion
I believe that the best policy is to be as powerful as possible in every field. Do
not think that being powerful refers only to force of arms. On the contrary,
I believe that this force comes last among the factors which constitute the
whole. I believe that being powerful means being strong in the scientific,
technical and moral areas. For if a nation is devoid of these values, even if
we imagine all its members are equipped with the most advanced arms, it
would be wrong to regard it as powerful. To be armed is not sufficient to
take one’s place as a human being in today’s community of humanity … I
believe that for my country … to achieve the progress of which I am well
aware and of which we have gone without, it is necessary to work hard and
continuously – in peace and tranquility, and above all while establishing
freedom and independence. (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ataturk’un Butun
Eserleri, p. 288. Speech given on August 30, 1924)

The point of this chapter has been to illustrate that every step that
Turkey and Turkish leaders took in the fateful years between 1918
and 1938 had an alternative. The choices they ended up making, taken
together, can only be explained by the established-outsider dynamic
that had been effective in the international system up until and during
that time, as well as by the Turkish leaders’ awareness of, adherence
to, and, at times, resistance against this structure. Turkey is indepen-
dent, sovereign, and confused about its identity today because of this
dynamic and its desire to seek normalcy within it.
In the summer of 2007, hundreds of thousands of people marched on
the streets of Turkey’s major cities against the purported Islamization

149
Toynbee, Turkey, p. 300.
156 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

of the Republic. The trigger for these marches was the fact that the wife
of the then presidential candidate, Abdullah Gül, wears a headscarf.
It has since come to light that these marches may have been organized
by an underground organization of ex-military men, journalists, and
bureaucrats bent on provoking the military to stage a coup to unseat
the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Nevertheless,
the majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who marched
were sincere in their fears that there was something very troubling
about the presidential candidate. Many Turks continue to believe that
a president whose wife wears a headscarf would be worse for Turkey’s
image abroad than a military junta regime. Among the many slogans
expressed on these marches were: “The spirit of the 1920s lights our
way,” “Just because you like the Rose,150 we cannot tolerate his thorn.”
What is especially interesting about these developments is the fact that
at the time of the marches, the AKP had been in power for almost five
years. What brought things to a head (literally) was the realization
that the headscarf, which is a symbol with incredible power in Turkey,
was about to be attached to the head of state, which only has sym-
bolic power. Even today, many Turks believe that respect in the inter-
national system can only be attained through Westernization, which
they understand as being synonymous with displaying the superficial
attitudes and markers of modernity. In the case of Turkey, the deci-
sion after defeat to overcome outsider status by following a strategy of
stigma correction has taken on a life of its own, and has come to defini-
tively shape the state identity around feelings of inferiority against the
West and superiority toward the East. It is this decision around which
all domestic cleavages are still organized.
Problems of the present day can all be traced back to the strat-
egy Turkey settled on after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The
Turkish modern state identity was a deliberate construction in direct
response to the lessons drawn from the international interactions of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and not an endogen-
ous manifestation exclusively emanating from dynamics within state
borders. When the Ottoman Empire was replaced by Turkey, the new
regime took it upon itself to fashion a domestic strategy that would
allow the state to feel ontologically more secure in its relations with

150
A play on words: the presidential candidate’s last name means rose. I assume
his wife is supposed to be the thorn.
Conclusion 157

the West. The goal was to change the hierarchical, stigmatizing rela-
tionship between Turkey and Europe, and join the circle of the “estab-
lished” states, but the republican regime constructed their strategy
around a worldview that was based in the internalized lessons from
the normative structure of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-
century international system. For instance, the Turkish state bor-
rowed its understanding of secularism from the 1920s French model;
in fact even the term is the same: laicism. This is the understand-
ing that was incorporated into the modern Turkish state identity.
Because this particular understanding of secularism is linked with
Turkish understanding of “modernity,” questioning it creates great
anxiety for most secular Turks. Their understanding of the concepts
of “nation” and “state,” for instance, also remain fi rmly rooted in
the normative ideals of the 1920s. Therefore, any demands for free-
dom of religious observation and/or accommodation of ethnic minor-
ity identities are interpreted as threats to Turkey’s “modern” identity.
While there is hardly any consensus in the West as to how best to
accommodate group rights, to argue that such things are un-modern
is to skip over almost a century of developments in Western identity
politics.151 Every hot-button issue in contemporary politics, from the
inflexible defi nition of secularism employed by establishment Turks
to the resistance to Kurdish efforts for recognition to the Armenian
genocide, is rooted in Turkey’s post-defeat quest for “civilization,”
and is therefore an unfortunate side effect of Turkey’s responses to its
stigmatized position.
Those were formative years for modern Turkey, and the aspirations
as well as the psychoses of that period continue to shape the Turkish
mindset. I think it would be fair to argue that, while the fall from
grace as a great empire and the humiliating years of foreign inter-
vention that the Ottoman Empire had to endure as a member of so-
called “semi-civilized” humanity are a thing of the past, the wounds
they have inflicted are still open. The European Union path on which
Turkey has willingly set itself recycles many of these same issues, and
Turkey’s present-day attempts to place itself as a model of a secular
or a moderate Muslim country, or as a mediator in Middle Eastern
conflicts, echoes Turkey’s earlier attempts to regain its lost status by

151
For an excellent discussion of secular Turks’ static understanding of
“modernity” and the “West,” see Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern.
158 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

trying to be a leader in the movement against imperialism at the exact

same moment the country was wholeheartedly emulating the civiliza-
tion of the imperialists.
Even in its most isolationist periods, the citizens and leaders of the
Republic of Turkey have never stopped playing to an imagined audi-
ence that is constantly assessing how civilized and modern Turkey
is.152 Turks resent this intrusive gaze but crave its approval, and sus-
pect the approval when it is dispensed, yet sense discrimination when
it is not. While secular, urbanized Turks feel the effects of this gaze
most strongly, even the most reactionary Turks are not immune to its
penetration. Unlike in most “developing” countries, Turkey’s choices
have not been dictated from outside, but have been propelled through
Turkey’s seemingly inconsistent exercise of auto-Orientalism on the
one hand and belief in its own intrinsic greatness on the other hand.
This experience is something Turkey shares with Japan and Russia,
and there is some solace to be found in that fact, and also in the
knowledge that, given the realities of the international system, this
path has served Turkey better than the alternatives. However, there is
something particularly corrosive to the soul about always seeing one-
self from others’ eyes – it is not good for the individual psyche, and it
is even worse for groups.
There is an apocryphal story about the fi rst Turkish Miss Universe,
Keriman Halis, who represented Turkey in the competition which
was held in Belgium in 1932. In crowning Keriman, the head of the
jury supposedly said:

Dear members of the jury, today we celebrate the victory of the European
Christian civilization. Islam, which has been dominating the world for

152
Here is but a recent example:
“Michelle Obama may have been the star of the US President’s European
show, but Turks were deprived of the chance to see her when she chose to
return to her children … The Turkish media have been following Michelle
Obama’s European visit with interest, carrying stories of her dress and
exploits … A picture of her at the G20 summit in London, standing next to
Emine Erdogan, the wife of the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, attracted
mixed emotions, however, since Mrs Erdogan’s Muslim headscarf is viewed
with distaste by secular Turkey’s establishment … ‘I bet she decided not to
come because she didn’t want to be involved with our headscarved crowd,’
said Cigdem, 39, an accountant. ‘Who would? I’m glad we don’t have to
watch her posing side by side with them here.’ ” Erdem, “Disappointment”.
Conclusion 159

1600 years, is now fi nished. Europe has fi nished it. Miss Turkey, Keriman,
the representative of all Muslim women who once upon a time looked out
to the world from behind curtains, is now among us in a bathing suit …
This year we are not only selecting Miss Universe. We are celebrating the
victory of Europe. The granddaughter of Suleiman the Magnificent …
wants us to admire her. And we admire this girl because she has adapted
to our ways. We select her as Miss Universe with the hope that all Muslims
will follow in her footsteps. We will raise our glasses in honor of the vic-
tory of Europe.

Unfortunately, despite numerous references to this speech in conser-

vative Turkish sources, I could not verify its authenticity from any
Western source, and if it is real, it was also downplayed in main-
stream Turkish newspapers of the time. However, even if it is only a
figment of the imagination of Turkish conservatives, as it may very
well be, I fi nd it a suitable note to end this chapter with. Pursuit of
status, regardless of the advantages it brings to the individual lower-
ranking agent, makes those who have higher status stronger by legit-
imizing and normalizing their arbitrary normative order.
4 “The children”: Japan
(1945–1974)

First there was silence, then sobs of grief.1 The humiliation was almost
too much to bear. Once again Japanese manhood had been put to the
test against superior Western force, and once again it had been found
wanting. But then an extraordinary thing happened. Moments after his
victory, Dutch fans tried to rush to the mat to congratulate their hero.
Immediately, however, Geesink raised his hand to stop them and turned
to Kaminaga to make his bow. The Japanese audience rose to applaud
this traditional gesture of respect. And they never forgot it. Geesink,
the big Dutch victor in Tokyo who had shown the Japanese what skill
as well as bulk could achieve, would be treated as a hero in Japan for-
ever after.
Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan

Introduction
Japan has been a pacifi st country and a reliable ally of the West
for more than half a century. Today, most casual observers take
this situation for granted, and generally assume that Japan’s defeat
and subsequent occupation by the United States left the country
with virtually no other option. 2 It is true that Japan had limited
options – the country was officially occupied for seven years and,
later, Cold War dynamics narrowed Japan’s room for maneuver.
However, a careful look at Japan in the decades after the crushing
defeat of 1945 reveals a country that not only made some unex-
pected choices and stuck to them, but also a state that was as pre-
occupied with its international stature as it had been before the war.
The unexpected choices that Japan has made, from its resistance

1
1964 Tokyo Olympics, Judo Championship match.
2
Ikenberry and Kupchan, “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” 305; Owen,
“Transnational Liberalism,” 131.

160
The European civilization standard and Japan 161

to remilitarization to its economic model, are intimately connected

with Japan’s desire to (re)gain the respect and recognition of the
international community.
In this chapter, I explore Japan’s choices and follow the same
organization as Chapter 3. First, I provide a brief historical account
of Japan, starting with the Meiji Restoration, and continuing on to
the motivations of Imperial Japan. Second, I make the case that Japan
made her own choices after 1945 despite the constraints of the post-
World War II international system. In the third section of the chapter,
I analyze those choices within the context of the stigmatization the-
ory outlined in Chapters 1 and 2 .

The European civilization standard and Japan: Bunmei

Kaika3
“Civilization and Enlightenment” always was more a cultural than a pol-
itical slogan, a matter of style and appearances. But appearances count for
a lot in Japan. There was a satirical Meiji saying that went: “Knock a head
without a top-knot, and you hear the sound of Bunmei Kaika.” As if wear-
ing one’s hair in the European style were a sign of superior breeding. Some
Meiji leaders seriously believed that a display of European manners would
persuade Western powers to give up the unequal treaties. (Ian Buruma,
Inventing Japan, p. 31)

Japan Westernized much later than Russia, but more comprehensively

than Ottoman Turkey.4 Despite the emergence of a backlash toward
the end of the nineteenth century, the Meiji Restoration allowed Japan
to retain its independence and made her a rising power in Asia in the
early twentieth century.5
The Meiji Restoration takes its name from the claim that it restored
the ancient form of Japanese rule.6 The impetus was the encroach-
ing European threat, just as in the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman
Empire. Unlike the Ottomans, however, the Japanese had the “advan-
tage” of dealing with an ethnically homogeneous society, relatively
speaking, and also the benefit of geography.

3
Civilization and Enlightenment.
4
Bull and Watson, Expansion of International Society, p. 74.
5
Watson, “Introduction,” pp. 29–30.
6
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 22.
162 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

As an island state, Japan had entered the nineteenth century in

isolation. Over the nineteenth century, several outside events forced
Japan to confront the reality of expanding European power. One of
these factors was the increasing number of Russian probes south to
the Kuril Islands.7 Another was the realization of the developments
occurring in China. The Opium War of 1839 and the subsequent
1842 Treaty of Nanking had forced China into capitulatory arrange-
ments, which in effect signaled the loss of Chinese sovereignty.8 This
served as a wake-up call for the Japanese, who feared they might be
next: “Bravery alone is not sufficient, the art of war demands some-
thing more. No outlandish power can compete with a European one,
as can be seen by the great realm of China which has been conquered
by only four thousand men.”9 Then came the Perry expedition in
1853.
The American commander, who arrived with four heavily armed
black ships, demanded to deal only with the highest officials10 of
Japan.11 After formal ceremonies, he departed, only to return six
months later. Americans demanded trade privileges, arguing that
the Chinese had found extending similar privileges very profitable;
fi nally a compromise was reached whereby the Americans could
use two Japanese ports for supplies.12 Japan was unprepared for a
coastal defense, but had nevertheless escaped the fate of China for
the moment.
Soon other countries started pressing for what was granted to the
United States. By 1855, the British and the Russians had their own
privileged treaties. The Americans, for their turn, came back ask-
ing for more. American negotiations were helped by the fact that the
British, with the aid of France, were inflicting even more humiliations
on China at the time.13 As the Japanese chief negotiator was backed
into a corner, he signed the treaty. However, this act signaled the
beginning of a period of unrest, as the weak Edo government was

7
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 260.
8
Ibid., p. 270.
9
Boxer, Jan Compagnie in Japan, p. 186.
10
Until this point, the Japanese were sending foreign emissaries to a tiny island
off the shore of Nagasaki.
11
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 278; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 1;
also see Totman, History of Japan.
12
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 278; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 2.
13
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 283.
The European civilization standard and Japan 163

blamed for foreign intrusions. The negotiator was assassinated two

years later by a group of samurai14 and a decade after the treaty, the
Tokugawa dynasty fell. The Meiji Restoration War, which began as a
coup organized by officials, was over in 1869.15
What did the Meiji Restoration bring? To begin with: the end of
feudalism and a very centralized state.16 In a document called “The
Charter Oath,” the emperor promised the establishment of delibera-
tive councils, the freedom for each individual to pursue their own
calling, abandonment of evil past traditions, and the search for knowl-
edge throughout the world.17 The military was completely reformed.
Economic readjustment was also a top priority for the Meiji state.
For instance, government expenditure was reduced and state indus-
tries were privatized.18 A new constitution, modeled on Prussia’s,
was introduced in 1889, and the fi rst national elections were held in
1890.19 It should be noted that many of these reforms were under-
taken with the West very much in mind; it was necessary for the West
to look upon Japan favorably in order to get the trade and port treat-
ies revised. It was also believed that these reforms were necessary for
Japan to compete in the modern world. Despite the existence of a
parliament, the political reforms did not go very far. 20 The constitu-
tion had placed sovereignty in imperial hands. Yet, it was the cultural
reforms, from the fashionable consumption of meat to the wearing
of frocks, that attracted the most attention from the West, but per-
haps not in the way the Japanese had hoped. Pierre Loti21 observed of
Japan: “They danced quite properly, my Japanese in Parisian gowns.

14
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 16.
15
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 336.
16
Ibid., p. 335. This was something Turkey could not/would not accomplish
until the Kemalist “revolution” in 1923.
17
Tsunoda, Sources of the Japanese Tradition, p. 644. Note the similarities to
the Tanzimat Declaration.
18
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 376. This was one of the several ways
the Meiji reforms were superior to the Ottoman Tanzimat. The Ottoman
observers seem to have missed the importance of the economy in competing
with the West; even in their observations about Japan, their attention is on
military and cultural matters. See Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’.”
19
Again, note the similarities with the Tanzimat reforms.
20
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 29.
21
Pierre Loti, coincidentally, was an Orientalist who spent considerable time in
Constantinople, romanticizing the “backward” ways of the East.
164 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

But one senses that it is something drilled into them that they perform
like automatons, without any personal initiative.”22
Nevertheless, the economic reforms were quite successful. As a
consequence, from the 1880s onwards, “foreign trade established
itself as a serious objective of the Meiji state.”23 If cultural equality
with the West remained elusive, attaining the Western model of eco-
nomic dominance seemed more within Japan’s grasp. The example of
the West convinced the Meiji period thinkers that trade and expan-
sion were aspects of a healthy state.24 Meiji writers such as Fukuzawa
Yukichi were convinced that it was important for Japan to signal to
the West that it was not a “backward” state like Korea. Moreover,
Foreign Minister Inoue recommended that Japan set up a Western-
style empire in Asia, before Western encroachment was complete. 25
It is important to note this feature of Imperial Japan: later it would
legitimize its actions as the defender of Asia against Western imperial-
ism, but Japan’s own behavior was very much modeled after Western
imperialism.26 During the Meiji period, Japanese attitudes to Asia
underwent a significant shift, which in itself was a consequence of
Japan’s efforts to redefi ne itself in the new world which seemed to have
Europe at both its center and its pinnacle. This shift was reflected in
the introduction of new terms and concepts to defi ne Japan’s relations
with its neighbors. For instance, shina replaced chugoku (Middle
Kingdom) as the most commonly used appellation for China.27 This
term (along with the usage of the term Nippon) reflected the new-
found need in Japan to defi ne both itself and its neighborhood in terms
of territorial, nation-state entities; and quickly shina became “a word
that signified China as a troubled place mired in its past, in contrast
to Japan, a modern Asian nation.”28 Another term which acquired a
new meaning and currency in the Meiji era was toyo, which came to

22
From Madame Chrysanthème, as quoted by Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 33.
23
Iriye, Japan and the New Asia, p. 758.
24
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 426.
25
Ibid., p. 427.
26
See also Suzuki, “Japan’s Socialisation,” as well as Civilization and Empire,
pp. 3–4
27
Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 3.
28
Ibid., p. 4. See also Suganami, “Japan’s Entry into International Society,”
pp. 196–8, for a comparison of Japan’s and China’s relationship with the
European society of states in the nineteenth century.
The European civilization standard and Japan 165

mean “that which was not the Occident,”29 and was used to indicate
a distinct culture of the East, an Oriental civilization.
The East as toyo was idealized: it was characterized by “its gentle-
ness, moral ethics, harmony and communalism.”30 Japan was seen
as the one Asian country which not only embodied the best aspects
of toyo but had adapted to the modern world. It is important to
note that the nihonjinron discourse about Japan’s uniqueness also
dates back to this same period. The term was used in Ariga Chonan’s
1888 book Kokka Tetsuron (Philosophical Discourses of the State), 31
which tried to explain Japanese uniqueness vis-à-vis the West scien-
tifically by attributing it to the 300 years of Tokugawa rule. 32 This is
a perfect example of the elite-level internalization of the modernist
ontology discussed in Chapter 1. The Japanese elite had not bought
into the European theory of racial inferiority, but did accept the fact
of comparative backwardness, and went about disputing it through
scientific means. In other words, they accepted the validity of the sci-
entific method and they internalized a worldview where everything
and everyone could be compared “objectively” with everything else.
Stefan Tanaka remarks that in the early twentieth century, Japanese
scholars, “having accepted a progressive and scientific conception of
knowledge … increasingly faced the problematic of ‘de-objectifying’
Japan – and Asia – from a unilinear concept of progress that con-
fi rmed Japan’s place as … Europe’s past and without history.”33 The
“sweeping views of world development introduced from Europe” were
accepted; it was Japan’s place in that view that produced problems. 34
To put it in another way, the scientific method had produced the desired
material results through the Meiji Restoration: Japan had been able to
industrialize, to renegotiate unequal treaties, and even defeat a major
“European” power in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). Yet Japan
still did not have actual equality with the European society of states,
because of Japan’s placement in Asia, which was cast as Europe’s
past in this new modernist ontology. In order for Japan to gain equal
respect, this conclusion would have to be challenged.35 However, as

29
Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 4. 30 Ibid., p. 13.
31
Leheny, Rules of Play, p. 38.
32
Ibid. Leheny’s reference here is Hiroshi, Nihonjinron, pp. 15–43.
33
Tanaka, Japan’s Orient, p. 17.
34
Ibid. See also Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 25–30.
35
Vincent, “Racial Equality,” p. 244.
166 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

Tanaka notes, there was an inherent paradox in these efforts: “For

in the process of adaptation and regeneration, these historians were
seeking to prove that they were not ‘Oriental,’ as defi ned by the West,
by using the same epistemology of the West.”36
I had noted in Chapter 2 that the stigmatized actor – assuming
that by this point he has already internalized the standards of stigma
framework – faces two kinds of problems: he requires acceptance
from wider society and also from himself. Japanese historian and
elite efforts to cast Japan as something other than “Oriental,” as
defi ned by the West, by rethinking Japan’s relationship with Asia
should be understood in this light. In other words, these efforts
were not undertaken only with an eye on getting equal respect from
the West, but so that Japanese could come to accept their iden-
tity as viewed through the lens of this new worldview. Japan could
no longer be left alone in its own “world”; but neither could she
accept her new position among the stigmatized East – so she had to
rethink her standing in comparison to toyo.
Thus, having accepted the modernist epistemology, the Japanese
went on to apply it to their relations with Asia.37 The success of the
Meiji Restoration, especially in the economic realm, meant that Japan
“objectively” ranked higher on the historical development plane than
the rest of Asia, which remained trapped in history. Therefore, it was
Japan’s destiny and duty to revive Asia and lead it into the new age.
Shina as part of the civilizational space of toyo naturally fell under
Japan’s manifest destiny.38

Imperial Japan
The Imperial Family of Japan is the parent, not only of her sixty millions,
but of all mankind on earth. In the eyes of the Imperial Family all races
are one and the same. It is above all racial considerations … The League of
Nations, proposed to save mankind from the horrors of war, can attain its
real object only by placing the Imperial Family of Japan at its head; for to
attain its object the League must have a strong punitive force and a super-
national and superracial character; and this force can only be found in the

36
Ibid., p. 244. 37 See ibid., pp. 45–9.
38
For an excellent discussion of the link between Japanese modernization and
imperialism, see also Suzuki, Civilisation and Empire.
Imperial Japan 167

Imperial Family of Japan. (Translated Niroku editorial, as printed in the

Japan Advertiser (May 9, 1919)39)

The fi rst step toward Japanese imperialism was the manifestation of

the tension with China over Korea. In 1884, Japan and China had
come to an agreement about the mutual backing-off of Korea. In the
meantime, Japanese efforts toward Westernization had borne some
fruit in relations with the West: in 1894, a new treaty with Great
Britain dissolved consular courts, and tariff autonomy soon followed
thereafter.40 Once this was accomplished, Japan returned its gaze to
Korea, and decided that China was gaining too much influence there.
In a strategic move, Japan asked China to join in demanding that
Korea undergo reforms very similar to those enacted by the Meiji
state: a specialized bureaucracy, a new judiciary, a reformed tax sys-
tem, and a modernized military.41 China declined the offer. Tokyo
declared war against China in 1894, and completely destroyed the
Chinese navy, delivering a humiliating defeat. China had to sign a
treaty that forced her to hand over territory (e.g. the island of Taiwan
and the Liaotung Peninsula), economic privileges, and a degree of her
sovereignty (the Treaty of Shimonoseki). Europe was impressed – it
had been predicted that China would prevail – but despite, or perhaps
because of, this favorable impression, Germany, Russia, and France
asked Japan to withdraw from some of the newly acquired territory.
The withdrawal was quite humiliating for Japan, especially consider-
ing the ever-growing presence of Russia and the United States in what
Japan saw as her own turf.42
The high point of Japanese militarism came a little later, in the
war against Russia. Japan struck the Russian fleet in 1904; the
Russians were completely unprepared as they thought the Japanese
would never dare to attack a major Western power. It was a rela-
tively even match, with casualties on both sides numbering tens of

39
And surprisingly enough, as quoted in Syngman Rhee’s 1941 volume: Japan
Inside Out, p. 14.
40
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 426.
41
Ibid., p. 431; Totman, History of Japan, p. 442. Even at this early stage,
Japan was acting as a vassal carrying international society norms to
peripheral areas.
42
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 44. Japan had struck an alliance with Great
Britain in 1902.
168 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

thousands.43 At the end, however, Japan emerged victorious, regain-

ing the Liaotung Peninsula and the Manchurian railways.44 Korea
came under Protectorate status in 1905, relinquishing control over
her foreign relations. Japan was emerging as an Asian great power.
Japan’s rise to power was aided by the outbreak of World War I
in Europe, which weakened European states. Japan was even able to
grab some German territories in Asia. It is therefore not surprising
that Japanese leaders did not really grasp the significance of changes
in Europe: empires tumbling down, self-determination and inter-
national cooperation on the rise.45 Yet, Japan was a rising power; it
was succeeding at a time where everybody else seemed to be flailing
(or merely isolated, as in the case of the United States).
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Japan continued to
be preoccupied with China. This was not purely materialistic aggres-
sion; as discussed above, many sincerely bought into the theory that
the Meiji state could provide a template for success in China. Others
were more interested in gaining parity with the West through the
“European way.” In the end, the second group prevailed, and Japan’s
special status in China was reaffi rmed through a series of treaties in
1907 and 1908 with Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United
States. Japan was playing great power politics – the timing was off,
but for the moment, Japan, among all Westernizing Asian nations,
seemed to be the one who broke the barrier most successfully.46
As noted above, views of China in Japan had undergone a signifi-
cant revision during the Meiji period. By the time of the Republican

43
For a point of comparison, please refer to the Turko-Russian War of 1877–8.
It is remarkable that the advancement of these outsider powers was always at
the expense of one another, and never a European power.
44
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 45.
45
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 512. The obvious point of comparison
is the position Russia’s Tsar Nicholas found himself in after the Napoleonic
Wars.
46
“Throughout Asia the fact that Japan had defeated a major imperialist power
attracted the admiration of nationalists of many stripes. Sun Yat-sen, the fi rst
president of the Chinese Republic, later recalled how, in going through the
Suez Canal, he had encountered an Arab who asked him if he was Japanese.
The Arab had ‘observed vast armies of Russian soldiers being shipped back
to Russia from the Far East,’ which seemed to him a sure sign of Russia’s
defeat. ‘The joy of this Arab,’ wrote Sun, ‘as a member of the great Asiatic
race, seemed to know no bounds.’” See Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan,
p. 441.
Imperial Japan 169

Revolution of 1911, which signaled the end of Chinese imperial dyn-

asty, the view that China was not “a state but merely a civilization”
was well established. Japan was not pleased with these developments
and in 1915 issued a list of demands to China (“The Twenty-One
Demands”47), to which China reluctantly agreed.48 The irony here
should be underlined: it was China’s lack of “development” – in a
way, her lack of shame over being Europe’s past – which had led the
Japanese to conclude that China was still mired in history. Yet, China’s
efforts to dust off the remnants of said history were condemned by
Japan, and only led to the deepening of the conclusion that China was
merely a civilization.49
Japan’s demands were humiliating to the new government of China,
which had the backing of the Americans. World War I ended before
the issue could be fully resolved, but the Japanese kept pressing. The
Japanese leaders were in no mood to be dissuaded by Western powers,
having been denied racial equality in the League of Nations Charter.
In the meantime, the Koreans, encouraged by Wilson’s principles,
staged a demonstration, which was swiftly and brutally crushed by
Japan.
Japan participated in the League of Nations, but many Japanese
had doubts about the new international order. The new order seemed
to favor the status quo, at the expense of latecomers such as Japan.
Japan soon found an excuse to act: rising Chinese nationalism of the
1920s.
The sparks fi rst flew in Manchuria, where the Japanese army was
already stationed. The army generals had the idea that another war
was coming, 50 and they wanted to take full control of Manchuria. The

“The Japanese had attained great power status in a very short time.
This was because their fi rst move was to get rid of Chinese schools and
Westernization.” Turkish writer Atay, Çankaya , p. 392.
47
E.g. Group 1, Article 1: “The Chinese Government engage to give full
assent to all matters that the Japanese Government may hereafter agree
with the German Government respecting the disposition of all the rights,
interests and concessions, which, in virtue of treaties or otherwise,
Germany possesses vis-à-vis China in relation to the province of
Shantung.”
48
China was saved from implementing them for a brief while by the
intervention of the Washington Conference of 1921–2.
49
Miwa, “Japanese Policies.”
50
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan.
170 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

military was also critical of the government in Tokyo, and the general
mood was not helped at all by the worldwide economic slump. The
officers planted a bomb on the railways, and used that as an excuse to
take over Manchuria. The government’s hands were tied, and subse-
quently the prime minister was assassinated in 1932. Imperial Japan
had entered its last stage. Generals, bureaucrats, and the court now
drove Japanese decisions and the Parliament turned into a “rubber
stamp” endeavor. Full-scale invasion of China followed in 1937, a
year made infamous by the Nanking massacre. 51
These aggressive moves were underpinned by the “New Order
in East Asia” policy, openly enunciated in 1938. By that year,
Japan had found itself increasingly isolated in the world, especially
since its departure from the League of Nations over the League’s
condemnation of the Manchurian incident. Yet Pan-Asianism (Dai
Ajiashugi) was not an innovation of late-1930s Japan. It was a policy
which had developed in direct response to Japan’s stigmatization by
Europe. I noted above that by the end of the Meiji period, there was
a great frustration among Japanese intellectuals about both Japan’s
temporal placement vis-à-vis Europe and the fact that Japan’s mater-
ial prosperity had not translated into equal social capital. While some
historians, as described above, had tried to overcome this problem by
challenging the conclusion of the analysis which defi ned Japan as an
“Oriental” nation only, others rejected the premise of relations with
Europe altogether. For instance, in 1916, Odera Kenkichi wrote:

Is it not strange that in the [sic] Europe which has come to control or over-
whelm Asia the talk of the Yellow Peril is boisterously heard, whereas from
among the colored peoples who have been conquered or intimidated by
the white nations little has been spoken out loud about the White Peril?
This, when the Yellow Peril is no more than an illusion while the White
Peril is real … Some people denounce Greater Asianism as being based on
a narrow racist frame of mind. But racial prejudices are what the white
nations have taught us. This trait is more especially pronounced among
them. The fact that their arguments about the Yellow Peril are provocative
and disdainful is proof enough, and the fact that in the New World dis-
criminatory treatment is being dealt out steadfastly [to non-white ethnic
groups] is substantial evidence. To speak of the White Peril and to advocate
Greater Asianism cannot touch the malicious propagation by Europeans

51
It is unclear whether the massacre was ordered by Tokyo.
Imperial Japan 171

and Americans of the Yellow Peril and their calls for a white alliance.
While the former is defensive, passive, and pacifist, the latter is offensive,
aggressive, and imperialistic. 52

As Japan’s isolation grew, such views became more popular. I had

noted in Chapter 2 that there are only a few recourses of strategic
action open to the stigmatized actor. What Kenkichi was advocat-
ing here is a variation on the “sour-grapes” strategy: embracing
Western approaches to international relations – including racial
prejudice – but refusing to play ball with the West. As discussed
above, there was always this strain in the Japanese reconceptuali-
zation of state identity: the stigmatized position Japan found itself
in as a result of its encounter with modernity made it impossible
to embrace the Western worldview as a whole because that would
mean conceding Japan’s inferior standing vis-à-vis the West. Nor
could it be rejected in its entirety, so each reaction had to fall along
a spectrum which has using Western methods to ingratiate oneself
to the West at the one end, and denouncing Western methods to
fight the West at the other (whereas true rejection would be aloof-
ness). This is the same dilemma that the stigmatized individual
faces in domestic society.
The attempts during the Meiji period to recast Japan fi rst as a vari-
ant of Europe which happened to be in Asia and second as a country
which was both modern and Oriental (in other words, as a country
which had successfully overcome its justifiably stigmatized past) resem-
ble strategies of passing and correction (which is the preferred method
of the upwardly mobile arriviste). The more these strategies failed
to achieve the desired result of obliterating Japan’s stigma, the more
attractive the strategies of rejection became. Both the “sour-grapes”
and ressentiment approaches fall under that heading. In fact, in the
decades following the publication of Kenkichi’s book, the trajectory
of the Japanese worldview gradually became even more reactionary.
For instance, in 1919, Yanagida Kunio criticized the Japanese govern-
ment for trying to place Japan at the same level as the white race and
“charged his countrymen with having little interest in establishing soli-
darity with other Asians who had experienced racial discrimination

52
From the introduction to his 1916 book Dai Ajiashugi ron (On Greater
Asianism), as quoted by Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” pp. 138–9.
172 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

similar to that faced by the Japanese.”53 Such a ressentiment attitude

was also exemplified by the writings of Nakayama Masaru, the man
who drafted “The New Order in East Asia Proclamation.”54 Masaru
idealized the Japanese peasants and the traditional way of life. He
wrote that agrarian villages had to be preserved at all costs because
they contained the best of the Japanese race.55 Miwa notes that, by
the end of the 1930s, such calls for the restoration of agrarian life
had become the prototype for the new order Japan was supposed to
establish in Asia:

It was a call to return to a classical East Asia, a new-found antithesis to

the modern industrial society of the West. And it could be accomplished
by fi rst destroying that order of international law of the European system
of nation-states which had been forced upon East Asian countries since the
mid-nineteenth century, and then by replacing it with an “international
new order” in accordance with the “real force of history.”56

Japan was supposed to be a “third civilization,”57 standing for new

values, capable of rescuing both the East and the West from them-
selves. It was very much assumed that the peoples of Asia, especially
the Chinese, were on board with this plan.58 This was the context in
which the concept of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was
articulated and announced in 1940. Of course, just as in European
imperialism, there was a strong economic motive accompanying the
civilization rhetoric. Sanctions from the West forced a deeper real-
ization in Japan over its dependence on imported resources.59 Also
in the same year, political parties were dissolved and replaced by the
Imperial Rule Association, partly because the Japanese thought an
alliance with Germany could help them break out of this isolation.60
The factors that pushed Japan into World War II have been explored
in detail elsewhere.61 In retrospect, it seems clear that various Japanese

53
Matsuda, Soft Power, p. 55.
54
Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” p. 140.
55
As quoted by Miwa, “Japanese Policies,” pp. 141–2.
56 57 58
Ibid., p. 142. Ibid. Ibid., p. 139.
59
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 627.
60
Furthermore, Japan’s actions in China had brought Japan face to face with
the United States.
61
See e.g. Van der Vat, Pacifi c Campaign; Churchill, Memoirs; Ludwig, World
at Arms.
Imperial Japan 173

actions during World War II, which seemed so shocking to the Western
world at the time, had their basis in the Japanese mindset which had
developed gradually during the prewar years. For instance, there
was the historical precedent of Japan successfully taking on a bigger
Western power in the form of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.62
Some observers have also noted that the war against the West gave the
Japanese people the sense of purpose that the war in China had been
lacking: “there was a sense of euphoria that we’d done it at last; we’d
landed a punch on those arrogant great powers Britain and America,
on those white fellows … Never in our history had we Japanese felt
such pride in ourselves as a race as we did then.”63 The initial victories
were greeted with great enthusiasm.
Japan termed the confl ict the “Great Asian War” and claimed that
she was freeing Asia from Western oppression: “The Japanese way of
life was ineffably superior to that of the West, based on individualism,
and that of China, based on familialism. Other Asian races looked
upon the Europeans and Americans as somehow superior, but it was
now up to Nippon to show how wrong they were.”64 This propaganda
was carried into the war years, as the Japanese needed something
besides brute force to solidify their grasp on Asia.65
By 1942, the situation was deteriorating and by 1944, after colos-
sal loss of Japanese territories, the Japanese leaders had realized that
the war could not be won.66 Nevertheless, the official propaganda
encouraged fighting until death and emphasized that there would be
no surrender. Mass suicide became widespread.67 The emperor made
some overtures to Stalin for peace, but the military preparations to
fight to the end continued.

62
Hosoya, “Characteristics of the Foreign Policy,” 354. Obviously, an
argument could be made that at the time it was defeated by Japan, Russia
was neither Western nor a major power, but that is not how the lesson was
perceived in Japan.
63
Okuna Takao, as quoted in Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 90; see also Jansen,
Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 642, for various eyewitness accounts of
reactions to the war.
64
Tokotomi Soho in 1934 from Tsunoda, Sources of the Japanese Tradition,
pp. 798–801.
65
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 99. Obviously, even eyewitness recollections of
wartime memories can be and are contested, and at least some are, in part,
post hoc rationalizations of events. However, even if that is the case, the
particular normative framework chosen for such rationalizations is telling.
66
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 100. 67 Ibid., p. 101.
174 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

How the war ended is well known. The United States dropped the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and, two days later,
on Nagasaki. The emperor read his surrender speech on August 15.
Japan would never be the same again.

Comparisons with Turkey

Ironically, it was the Japanese delegate who most vehemently opposed
Turkish demands for the lifting of capitulations. The Japanese delegate,
Hayachi, told İsmet Pasha that Japan, too, had suffered from capitula-
tions, and so he sympathized with Turkish demands. However, not even
in Japan had the capitulations been lifted before the implementation of
necessary administrative and legal reforms! (Notes from 1923 Lausanne
Proceedings68)

Before continuing with the postwar chapter of Japanese history, a few

comparisons with Turkey should be underlined, considering that the
events covered so far were coterminous with the events described in
Chapter 3.
First, one cannot but be struck by similarities that stem from the fact
that, in the nineteenth century, Ottoman Turkey and Japan occupied
the same social space vis-à-vis the European society of states, despite
their geographical distance. They were both outsiders in the emerging
international society. Therefore, they had very similar reactions to
European intrusion;69 going through the same motions of superficial
emulation and constitutional reforms and the same pleas for equal
treatment in trade treaties, and roughly around the same time. The
Tanzimat reforms were issued in 1856 – only a decade before the
fall of the Tokugawa dynasty. The Ottoman Empire adopted a con-
stitutional regime in 1876 and Japan’s Restoration began in 1870.
Furthermore, while the economic treaties with Western powers were
a great threat to sovereignty, the main source of territorial aggression
against both countries was Russia, which, as we shall see in Chapter
5, was itself a liminal power.
Nonetheless, several differences explain the temporary success of
Japan in its quest for status and power during the Meiji Restoration,

68
Karacan, Lozan, as translated and discussed in Chapter 3.
69
Aydın’s Anti-Westernism in Asia marshals evidence for this argument in
great detail.
Japan makes the best of defeat 175

whereas the comparable reform efforts in the Ottoman Empire

foundered. First, as a multiethnic empire, the Ottomans spent a con-
siderable amount of time and resources unsuccessfully fighting the
nationalist separatist movements, which were also encouraged by
the European powers. Geography was also a factor; there were no
natural barriers between the Ottoman Empire and European infil-
tration. Furthermore, the Ottomans had an early history of deal-
ing with Europe successfully, which blinded them to the urgency of
the situation, at least initially. The Japanese would not achieve the
Ottoman level of arrogance until the 1930s. For all these reasons,
Japan was able to embark on a more successful and comprehensive
Westernization program, and sustain the new state with military
advances until World War II. The Ottomans never fi nished the pro-
ject they began, until they were defeated.
Finally, attention needs to be paid to the fact that the Russian
advancement between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries had
come at the expense of the Ottomans, while the Japanese proved
their rising power status at the expense of the Russians at the turn
of the twentieth century.70 One cannot but be struck by this fact – it
is almost as if there was only one spot open for outsider states at the
great powers’ table. While there are of course perfectly reasonable
geographical explanations for this development, we should also note
that this pattern is well observed in the established-outsider stigma-
tization dynamics in domestic society: for instance, the advances of
younger women or people of color in business settings often come at
the expense of people from their own sub-group.

Japan makes the best of defeat

Embracing the defeat: 1945–1952
“We all thought the emperor was going to ask us to fight to the death,” said
Kumasaki. “We dreaded it, but we prepared ourselves for that. Of course,
we would have obeyed.” (Russell Brines, MacArthur’s Japan)
MacArthur’s remark in 1951, that in terms of modern civilization the
Japanese were like a twelve-year-old boy, was typical of his thinking …

70
China was another semi-power whose geographical proximity and state
decline proved advantageous for Japan.
176 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

MacArthur, was comparing Japan to Germany. The Germans, he said, were

a “mature race.” The Japanese were still in “a very tuitionary condition.” …
The Germans did not have to be tutored in the ways of another civilization.
(MacArthur did not mean this as a compliment; in his view the Germans
were all the more despicable because they should have known better.) The
Japanese, on the other hand, had behaved like the children they were. They
had, in MacArthur’s version of events, “stumbled” into militarism because
they did not know any better. (Ian Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 108)

Japan’s choices in the postwar era are associated primarily with two
men: General MacArthur and Yoshida Shigeru.71 General MacArthur
was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) and headed
its office in Japan from 1945 to 1951. Yoshida served five short terms72
as prime minister, most of them during the occupation years. He is
credited with shaping the postwar direction of Japan under what is
known as the “Yoshida Doctrine.” This doctrine held that Japan
should concentrate on and prioritize economic reconstruction and
development, and leave security matters to the United States.73
Americans had expected resistance to the occupation,74 but upon
taking over the country with relative ease, MacArthur immediately
set about the task of reforming the existing system, which in his
mind had brought out the worst tendencies of a “childlike” people.75
The general ordered that certain reforms be undertaken immedi-
ately: emancipating women through enfranchisement; encouraging
the unionization of labor; liberalizing schools; abolishing “systems
which through secret inquisition and abuse have people in constant
fear”; and democratizing economic institutions.76 The original plan of
SCAP was to treat Japan as a laboratory for Asian democracy, a plan
that was also fed by the New Deal in the United States.77
However, after the war was over, it quickly became evident to
MacArthur and SCAP that the Soviet Union factor needed to be taken
seriously. He and his office believed that if traditional institutions

71
Although, arguably, Kishi played a more significant role than Yoshida in
entrenching what came to be known as the Yoshida Doctrine.
72
May 22, 1946–May 24, 1947; October 15, 1948–February 16, 1949;
February 16, 1949–October 30, 1952; October 30, 1952–May 21, 1953;
May 21, 1953–December 10, 1954.
73
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 69.
74
Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 23.
75 76 77
Ibid., p. 107. Ibid., p. 48. Totman, History of Japan, p. 443.
Japan makes the best of defeat 177

were dismantled entirely, the Soviet Union would step in to fill the
vacuum.78 As a result, the idea that Japan should be a bulwark against
communism started to take precedence over the idea of Japan as an
equitable democracy.79 Consequently, the goal of economic recon-
struction was prioritized and by 1947, American policy had shifted
its focus from punishment to development.80
Only two of the planned reforms were enacted in the way origi-
nally envisioned: the new Japanese constitution and land reform. The
results of reform in the sectors of labor, education, and local govern-
ment were mixed and the plan to break up the zaibatsu monopolies
was a failure.81
The new constitution enumerated the rights and liberties of citizens
and strengthened the Parliament. Article 1 emphasized that sovereignty
resided with the people and that the emperor derived his position from
the will of the people. Article 9 declared that Japan was renouncing
war as a sovereign right and that military forces to that end would not
be maintained. Article 9 would become a source of future controversy
and would go on to frustrate neorealist scholars for many years, but it
was rather well received by the Japanese: “Most Japanese were quite
content never to have to fight another war. Besides, Article 9 allowed
them to bask in the glow of moral satisfaction: the first pacifist nation
in history.”82 The Yoshida government, initially reluctant, accepted the
constitution because it was partly believed that the fate of the emperor
rested on its adoption.83 The chambers of the Diet passed the constitu-
tion on October 6, 1946, and the emperor approved it on November
3 of the same year.
Also in 1946, a study group composed of Japan’s economic experts
issued a report that declared Japan should proceed “from a broad
global and developmental standpoint” in formulating its economic
policies; that Japan “must discern the course of progress of human
society, its present state and future trends, and second, understand
the nature of the world environment in which Japan now stands, and

78
Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 51.
79
Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 45; Pempel, “Japanese Foreign
Economic Policy,” 731.
80
Totman, A History of Japan, p. 445; Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 53.
81
Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 63.
82
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 118.
83
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 685.
178 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

in which it will stand in the future.”84 As Jansen notes, there was no

defeatism in this new economic outlook.
In the meantime, labor leaders became restless, partly in response
to the influence of communists within the unions, and they called for
a general strike in the winter of 1946. It was assumed that this would
be at least tolerated by SCAP. This turned out to be a mistake, as
MacArthur banned the strike, declaring that he would not allow such
“a deadly weapon” to be used in the context of impoverished Japan.85
MacArthur launched a campaign for an early peace treaty in 1947
and followed it with steps to end the economic blockade.86
Nevertheless, labor leaders kept the pressure up. They demanded
and achieved the removal of the Yoshida Cabinet, calling Yoshida
a representative of the industrialists87 and a “SCAP toady.”88 In the
subsequent elections of 1947, leaders of all major labor organizations
were elected to the Diet.89
As the 1940s drew to a close, SCAP became increasingly worried
about communist infiltration of Japan, and the outbreak of the Korean
War did not help matters.90 Initially, many American observers had
been skeptical that the reforms would work91 and there was a general
concern that Japanese society had an affi nity toward authoritarian
regimes.92 Since the Soviet Union had an outward policy of disinterest
or even hostility toward Japan, it had been barred from participating
in the occupation by the United States.93 When the Soviet Union signed
a treaty of friendship with China in 1950, Japan was singled out as
a potential aggressor.94 Nevertheless, the United States suspected the
Soviets of covert propaganda in Japan: bookstores were fi lled with
Soviet magazines and books.95 Not every leftist or union organizer
was a communist, but there was enough sympathy for the viewpoint
to cause SCAP and Washington headaches. The left demanded com-
plete independence from the United States.96 They also looked up to

84 85
Ibid., p. 693. Ibid., p. 698; Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 165.
86 87
Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 79. Ibid., p. 165.
88 89
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129. Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 178.
90
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 699; Brines, MacArthur’s Japan,
pp. 206, 254.
91
Morley, “Between Two Eras,” p. 1.
92
Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 258; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 107.
93
Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 30.
94 95
Ibid., p. 31. Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 261.
96
Ibid., p. 263.
Japan makes the best of defeat 179

the Soviet Union and felt “a kind of guilt-ridden solidarity with the
Chinese communists.”97 The leftists argued that any security arrange-
ments with the United States would compound the historic mistake
Japan made by trying to be a Western-style imperialist power. They
thought that Japan should stand in alliance with Asian neighbors who
were fighting imperialism.98
At the same time, especially in Asia, there were fears that Japan
was going to revert to its old imperialistic ways once it gathered its
strength.99 The fact that many militarists went unpunished did little
to quell these fears. In the 1940s, the people resented militarists but
many remained unconvinced that Japan was wrong in wanting an
empire.100 Given this attitude and this history, it was not surprising
that many Asian nations protested American support for the Japanese
economy.101 This support included bringing in a Detroit banker
named Joseph Dodge who drew up a monetary stabilization program
(“The Dodge Line”).102 Among his recommendations was one that
suggested Japanese workers and consumers should make sacrifices for
the national good.103 Subsequently, many layoffs followed. In addi-
tion, in 1950, purge orders were issued by SCAP against alleged com-
munists in media and labor organizations and nearly 20,000 people
were forced from their jobs.104
It was in this context that the peace treaty was negotiated. After
a brief interruption, Yoshida was prime minister again. However,
MacArthur was out. The Korean War had erupted, supplying the
Japanese economy with much needed demand, and MacArthur
invoked Truman’s wrath by threatening to take the war into China.105
However, the Japanese were against becoming entangled in another
conflict. MacArthur was replaced by Dulles, who wanted Japan to
remilitarize106 so that it could be counted on for its own defense.107 He
wanted a Japanese army of 350,000 troops108 and Japan to limit its

97
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130. 98 Ibid.
99
Brines, MacArthur’s Japan, p. 140. 100 Ibid., p. 124.101 Ibid., p. 150.
102
Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 77.
103
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 124.
104
Allinson, Japan’s Postwar History, p. 55; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 24.
105
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 125.
106
A small force called the Japanese Defense Forces was created in 1950.
107
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.
108
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129.
180 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

commercial relations to dealing only with those in the “free world.”109

Yoshida was entirely against the remilitarization of Japan and did not
want to bypass Article 9 or burden the Japanese economy.110
Yoshida negotiated skillfully111 and argued that establishing a for-
mal military would antagonize the socialist opposition. There are
reports that he secretly encouraged the socialists to demonstrate in
front of his office in order to strengthen his hand.112 In the end, he
prevailed. In the compromise that was reached, access to Okinawa
was given to the United States to create a military base. It was prom-
ised that in some distant day in the future Japan would assume
responsibility for its own defense. Until then, the United States would
be responsible for Japan’s security and Japan would be free to priori-
tize economic development.113 On the negative side, Japan, by recog-
nizing the Republic of China in Taiwan, had to forgo its trade with
the People’s Republic of China,114 which was starting to redevelop.115
A peace treaty and a security treaty were signed simultaneously in San
Francisco, in September 1951. Also as part of this arrangement, Japan
recognized the independence of Korea and renounced all claims to

109
Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 649.
110
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.
111
“Looking back over the origins and development of Japan’s postwar defense
policy, it seems clear that this policy was not cooked up in Washington
and swallowed whole in Tokyo. On the contrary, Prime Minister Yoshida’s
feelers and Foreign Minister Ashida’s memorandum on security policy in
1947 are strong evidence that the Japanese leaders had a well-thought-out
defense policy, based on their strategic views, several years before the United
States Government formulated its Far Eastern security policy.” Weinstein,
Japan’s Postwar Defense Policy, p. 128.
112
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701; Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 129.
113
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130; Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701;
Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine,” 397.
114
1950 resolution passed by a large majority in the Upper House of the Diet:
Before the war about 65 percent of our trade was with Asia, and most
of that with China. These facts are particularly significant in light of the
steadily diminishing U.S. economic aid. Business and trading circles and
the Japanese people urgently desire the renewal of direct trade relations
with China in order to relieve the stagnation in trade and commerce …
Japan absolutely cannot exist unless trade is promoted. The government
should leave aside ideological and political differences and look at the purely
economic problems, exchange economic missions with the new China,
restore trade with her immediately, and set forth a bold course of action. (As
quoted in Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 651)
115
Ibid.
Japan makes the best of defeat 181

Taiwan and the other Pacific Islands it had invaded during World War
I.116 The treaty went into effect in 1952. Japan was sovereign again.
Dulles’s part in these developments should not be entirely dis-
counted, especially because he seems to have had an intuitive under-
standing of the effect of stigmatization on Japan’s national habitus,
and used that understanding to his advantage. As Takeshi Matsuda
notes, “Dulles recognized that historically the Japanese wanted to be
counted among the members of the Western world, but if only they
were received on terms of approximate equality.”117 Furthermore,
Dulles was disposed “to capitalize on the Japanese feeling of racial
and social superiority to the Chinese, Koreans, and Russians, and
to convince them as part of the free world they would be in equal
fellowship with a group which was superior to the members of the
communist world.”118 Dulles had observed that “the Japanese were
particularly sensitive to the assumption that they were ‘backward’ or
‘undeveloped’ because Japanese felt that their own advancement was
beyond the general levels of civilization in Asia.”119 Dulles realized
that a long-term Western alliance with Japan could only be sustained
if the West realized Japan’s hunger for status and equal respect in the
international system and played along.
Yoshida’s own memoirs corroborate Dulles’s impressions. In the
following passage, Yoshida dismisses the argument that Japan’s plight
bears any resemblance whatsoever to that of other Asian nations and
argues instead that Japan’s destiny is to be a role model and norm
mediator (I quote at length from this passage because of its pertinence
to the argument of the book):

According to some people, Japan too gained – or rather, regained – her

independence in 1952 after seven years of foreign occupation, and, our
plight being therefore much the same as those of other countries of Asia
and Africa, we should throw in our lot with them in opposition to such
“colonial” powers as the United States, Great Britain, and France. Such a
view seems to be completely at variance with actual facts. Apart from the
few years of foreign occupation following the termination of the Pacific
War, Japan has been an independent state throughout its long history and
we cannot conceive of our country occupying any other status than that of
a completely independent and sovereign nation. In the fields of government,

116
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 701.
117
Matsuda, Soft Power, p. 55. 118 Ibid. 119
Ibid.
182 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

economy, industry, and social development, also, Japan is more Western

than Asian – at least insofar as the levels attained by us in those spheres are
concerned – whereas many of the other countries of Asia and Africa are
still undeveloped, or under-developed, industrially and economically, and
their peoples have still to attain the standards of living to which modern
civilization entitles them to aspire. In short, they are what we are forced
to recognize as backward nations … We can both understand and sympa-
thize with their present policies, but that is not to say that we should rate
them as being more important – internationally – than they actually are,
and still less that Japan should model its foreign policy on their largely
negative philosophy. I have stated that we Japanese are in many respects
more European than Asian; nevertheless, Japan is geographically an Asian
nation and economically an integral part of the continent and, as such, bet-
ter equipped than are most Western peoples to understand Asia. Racially
speaking, also, other Asian and African nations tend to feel a greater sense
of kinship towards Japan than towards the peoples of the West. This fact
coupled with our superior economic development, should, it seems to me,
leave us in little doubt as to the role which Japan must play in international
affairs in the future … It is our duty to aid the peoples of Asia and Africa in
their economic development and thus foster an awareness in the countries
concerned that the political institutions and way of life of the free nations
of the earth are best suited to bring prosperity to their nations and happi-
ness to the peoples therein.120

The passage is striking in several ways. First, Yoshida seems intent

on situating Japan apart from and above the rest of the “East”
while acknowledging that geographically and racially Japan bears
an affi nity to the newly independent former colonies (which would
soon be grouped under the category of the “Third World”). The
reader will notice that, in spirit, this line of argument is not that
different than the Meiji Era constructions of Japan as the leader
of Asia and a country on equal footing with the West. Second,
Yoshida explicitly makes the argument that Japan should take an
active role in leading Asia and Africa by convincing them that “the
political institutions and way of life of the free nations … are best
suited to bring prosperity … and happiness.” If we compare this
with the earlier rhetoric of the Greater Asian Prosperity Sphere, we
see that the way Yoshida situates Japan and its mission vis-à-vis the

120
Shigeru, Last Meiji Man, pp. 10–12 (italics added).
A new Japan 183

other nations of Asia is not substantially different. What have been

substituted, however, are Japan’s claims to have invented a better
values system compared to the West. In Yoshida’s rephrasing, Japan
is now a missionary for Western values, and one that is better at
selling those values even than the West.
In other words, several responses of the stigmatized individual dis-
cussed in Chapter 2 are clearly visible in this passage; especially on
display are the strategies of stratifying against one’s own stigma group
and seeing one’s affi nity with the stigma group as a mixed blessing.
Finally, what is remarkable about the passage is the ease with which
Yoshida is using the norm rhetoric of the postwar years discussed in
Chapter 2 . He has no problem labeling the newly independent nations
of Asia and Africa as “backward” and there are several references to
economic development. This passage is evidence of the clear intent
behind the policy Japan pursued during the Cold War years: fighting
stigmatization through an emphasis on economic development and
pursuing a strategy of playing up Third World connections in order
to get respect from the West.

A new Japan
Because it has been constrained from becoming a political and military
superpower … Japan’s business and foreign policy activities in East Asia
are intensely market-centered … Japan’s foreign policy is thus built on for-
eign trade … This market orientation is natural for Japan as long as its
foreign policy uses economic affluence and manufacturing competitiveness
as ways to influence other countries. (Takashi Inoguchi, “Japan’s Foreign
Policy in Asia”, p. 409)
Within the incubator of the patron–client relationship, Japan slowly rede-
fi ned its foreign policy orientation. Having failed internationally with
militarism and domestically with totalitarianism, and having no real com-
mitment to the larger strategic goals of the Cold War, Japan looked else-
where for foreign policy direction. Consistent with its perennial desire to
achieve international stature, Japan emphasized economic relations. (Louis
D. Hayes, Japan and the Security of Asia, p. xv)

Yoshida had been more successful than his American counterparts in

dictating the outcome of the San Francisco Treaty. The most import-
ant achievement was that Japan could decide for itself when and how
184 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

(and if) it was going to re-arm.121 This would allow Japan to focus
entirely on economic recovery and growth. Furthermore, its strong
ties with the United States gave Japan access to the largest market.
Yoshida refused his critics’ argument that the security arrangement
had made Japan subservient to the United States, and commented that
there was no reason to feel “a colonial sense of inferiority.”122 This
worldview would later become entrenched in Japanese foreign policy
as the “Yoshida Doctrine.” However, it would be a mistake to con-
clude that it had unconditional support from the beginning.
Students and workers, supported by the Communist Party,
labor unions, and leftist intelligentsia, staged massive demonstra-
tions against the security treaty in May 1952.123 They were against
“American imperialism” and did not want Japan to be part of it. On
September 12, 1954, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov announced
that “the Soviet Union was ready to normalize relations, provided
that Japan showed a similar willingness.”124 With the help of the
socialists, the Democrats brought down the Yoshida government.125
Going into the 1954 elections, it seemed that the socialists might have
a chance of winning when various factions overcame their differences
and merged. However, in response, the conservatives, formerly repre-
sented by the Democrat and the Liberal parties, also merged, form-
ing the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP).126 The LDP came to power,
fi rst under the leadership of Hatoyama Ichiro, who immediately
announced that normalization of relations with the Soviet Union and
the People’s Republic of China was a priority.127 However, the plan to
restore diplomatic relations with China was quickly abandoned.128
One of the major developments under Hatoyama’s leadership was
Japan’s enthusiastic entry into the United Nations. In the admittance
speech, the Japanese foreign minister declared that “possessing a cul-
tural, political and economic system that fused both Western and

121
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 703.
122
Shigeru, Yoshida Memoirs, p. 4.
123
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130.
124
Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 2.
125
Ibid., p. 32. 126 Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 133.
127
Yomiuri shimbun, December 10, 1954; Asahi shimbun, December 13, 1954,
both quoted in Hellmann, Japanese Foreign Policy, p. 32.
128
Asahi shimbun, January 22, 1955, as quoted in Hellmann, Japanese Foreign
Policy, p. 32.
A new Japan 185

Eastern civilizations, Japan could very well become a bridge between

East and West.”129 Japan also achieved GATT membership the same
year, but European countries, and even the United States, remained
reluctant to lift restrictions on Japanese trade for almost a decade.130
In 1957, Kishi Nobusuke became prime minister and served until
1960. Kishi was a conservative, and had even spent three years in
prison as a war criminal. On economic matters, he was in favor of
state control and a planned economy. He, too, had problems with the
security treaty. The right-wingers maintained that Japan’s war had
been just: they wanted to revise Articles 1 and 9 of the constitution,
to restore the emperor’s divinity, and for Japan to actively join the war
against communism.131 Kishi wanted to change the security treaty as
well: “The security treaty, which gave the United States a free hand on
Japanese soil, reminded many Japanese, on the Right and the Left, of
the unequal treaties in the 1860s.”132 Therefore, Kishi wanted Japan to
be more assertive.
To achieve that result, he went on a tour of Southeast Asia and apol-
ogized for past atrocities. He also went to Washington, but secured
only a minor promise that Japan would be consulted in future deploy-
ments. On this visit, Kishi also recommended the establishment of a
Southeast Asian development fund: “The biggest problem the Asian
countries are being faced with for the time being is how to add eco-
nomic independence to their political independence … Our country
is willing to cooperate with these countries in various fields for their
economic development.”133 Japan’s potential as a role model for devel-
oping countries in Asia and Africa had already been observed at the
1955 Bandung Conference.134
However, on the home front, Kishi could not secure the support of
the socialists for revisions in the security treaty. They were suspicious
of him because of his nationalist past, and they thought the changes
were merely cosmetic:

By the end of 1959, radical students were rushing toward the Diet and
pissing on its doors. First tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands

129
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 73.
130
Austin and Harris, Japan and Greater China, p. 33.
131
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 130. 132 Ibid., p. 135.
133
As quoted in Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 73.
134
Ibid.
186 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

joined the demonstrations. Police barricades were crushed … Soon almost

a million people were in the streets, screaming – in English – “Yankee go
home!” … For a moment it looked as if revolution might be at hand. All
the hatred and distrust of the old order, and the United States, which was
blamed, not without reason, for supporting it, gathered like a storm in the
streets of Tokyo.135

The Diet was divided over the controversial ratification of the

treaty. For instance, the socialists locked up the Diet Speaker in his
office, who called the riot police, and, while the LDP held the rati-
fication vote without the socialists, Kishi had to resign.136 He was
replaced by Ikeda Hayato, who oversaw Japan’s re-entry onto the
world stage.
The period between the end of World War II and Kishi’s resignation
in 1960 can be viewed as the period when Japan made its decisions
about the kind of country it wanted to be.137 Within this period, des-
pite the occupation, there was considerable debate within Japan about
the US partnership.138 There were three sides to the debate: fi rst, prag-
matic conservatives, such as Yoshida, wanted to make the best of a
constraining situation; second, nationalists like Kishi desired Japan
to be more autonomous in its relations with the United States and
remilitarize;139 third, the left and the socialists wanted the United
States to leave and Japan to forge better relations with China and other
oppressed peoples of Asia. Japan in this period could not be described
as a monolithic society that had been cowed into submission. To the
contrary, it was a very divided society until the radicalized left and
the nationalist right took each other’s eyes out in 1960,140 leaving the
ground open to the more moderate pragmatists represented by Ikeda.
Ikeda cemented support for the Yoshida Doctrine by announcing and
delivering on the income-doubling plan of 1960–70.141 Of course, the
doctrine was successful with the people because it also delivered onto-
logical security by raising Japan’s profile in the world.

135
Buruma, Inventing Japan, p. 136.
136
Ibid., p. 137; Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan, p. 708.
137
This also squares with Kissinger’s observation that Japan changed its foreign
policy every 15 years. Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 178.
138 139
Ibid., p. 179. Ibid.
140
Totman, History of Japan, p. 450.
141
Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 179.
A new Japan 187

It is possible to interpret the mass riots of 1960 as a symptom of

the growing confidence of the Japanese people.142 That confidence
reached a new high in 1964, the year Japan hosted the Olympics: “No
longer a defeated nation in disgrace, Japan was respectable now …
To the Japanese, always acutely conscious of their ranking among
nations, sporting victories were one way to soothe memories of war-
time defeat.”143 This was also the year Japan joined the International
Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, clubs that marked “Japan’s rise from a developing
country to a member of the industrialized world.”144 Thus, the 1960s
were a good decade for Japan. Trade with South Korea and Taiwan
increased substantially145 and the GNP kept rising, as did Japan’s
influence, at least in the way Japanese now perceived the world.146
One of the catch-phrases of the decade was “US–Japan equal partner-
ship”: Japan had reached a point where it envisioned itself as on a par
with most industrialized countries in the West.
Nonetheless, Japan encountered some problems in the 1960s. For
instance, there was still resistance from Europe to Japanese trade. On
a trip to France, Ikeda was called “a transistor radio salesman” and
was made fun of for his short stature by Charles de Gaulle.147 It took
many years for Japan to receive respectable treatment in the inter-
national organizations of which it was a member.
Every policy in this decade was subordinated to macro-level eco-
nomic growth, a big part of which was achieved through foreign
economic policies: “As such, Japanese foreign economic policy has
been neither isolated from, nor contradictory to, domestic economic
policies. Nor has it been directed more fundamentally to achieving
security, military, or other external political and noneconomic aims
… International glory was domesticated and treated as measurable
through increases in GNP.”148 Perhaps for this reason, despite a high
degree of commitment to pacifism and peace, Japan pursued trade

142
Packard, “Living with the Real Japan,” p. 38.
143
Buruma, Inventing Japan, pp. vii–viii; see also Inoguchi, “Japan:
Reassessing the Relationship,” p. 246.
144
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 77.
145
Inoguchi, “Asia and the Pacific Since 1945,” p. 916.
146
See Inoguchi, Japanese Politics, p. 39.
147
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 78.
148
Pempel, “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy,” 741.
188 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

rather aggressively. China, for instance, viewed Japanese trade as a

political weapon and attached difficult conditions to all trade agree-
ments with Japan, in effect curtailing most exchange.149 Others also
criticized Japan for practicing a new kind of imperialism through
trade in Asia.150
As the 1960s drew to a close, Japan re-emerged as a major pres-
ence in Asia, but observers were baffled by the question of what
her future direction in foreign policy would be. Some thought that
Japan would become more active in the economic and political
affairs of Southeast Asia, or perhaps lead the nonaligned states.151
The role of mediator was also frequently offered.152 The Americans
desired that Japan re-arm and more actively support American
policies in Vietnam in particular and Asia in general.153 Writing
in 1968, Badgley keenly observed that the Japanese government
seemed “to be developing a new principle in foreign policy, one that
might accommodate the free-world orientation, dominant for the
past two decades, and the Asian orientation, held both by those
with progressive ideological beliefs and by those with conservative
cultural attachments.”154 This would be the principle of “regional
development,” with Japan getting more involved in the political and
economic affairs of Asian states. Japan could be a model of success
by adopting Western technology while keeping her Asian identity.155
Badgley also suggested that this policy was a result of Japan’s histor-
ical tendency to seek influence and status in Asia.156 He added that
“although Japan’s ability to play a leading role in Southeast Asian
affairs rests on its demonstration of successful modernization as an
Asian state, the country’s influence over its neighbors will flow from
the most dramatic outward manifestation of that success: its eco-
nomic power and interests and the reciprocity these activities have
created and will foster among its trading partners.”157 Japan had
already taken concrete steps in this direction by joining the Asian
Development Bank in 1966.

149
Holsti, “Politics in Command,” 653.
150
Steven, Japan’s New Imperialism, p. 244.
151
Osgood, “Japan and the United States in Asia,” p. 9.
152
Badgley, “Necessity and Choice,” p. 150.
153
Packard, “Living with the Real Japan,” p. 36.
154
Badgley, “Japan’s Nonmilitary Road,” p. 51.
155 156 157
Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., p. 57.
A new Japan 189

Following the United States’ lead, Japan normalized its relations

with China in 1972. By this time, Japanese GNP had risen to be second
only to the United States. Japan had maintained a peaceful profile for
more than two decades. Nevertheless, Japan had not yet earned the
full trust of the American public. Annual opinion polls conducted by
the Japanese Foreign Ministry consistently showed trust for Japan in
the United States hovering around 40 percent. Asian countries, espe-
cially those that had been colonized by Japan in the past, remained
even more skeptical.158 In 1973, Japan unsuccessfully sought a per-
manent seat on the UN Security Council.159
Whatever outside observers might think, since the 1970s, Japan
has not wavered substantively from the path Yoshida chose. The
Japanese learned to take pleasure in their GNP. As Matsuyama com-
ments: “Why is the Japanese GNP so highly publicized? I presume
that one reason is that the Japanese, who had lost confidence and had
been suffering from an inferiority complex since the end of the war,
have fi nally found delight in the GNP as a means of competing with
and surpassing other powers, this satisfying the national pride.”160
Or, as Maull has put it, Japan was on its way to becoming a civilian
power.161
For the sake of comprehensiveness, however, let me note that the
more things have changed, the more things have remained the same
in Japanese foreign policy.
On the one hand, there is no doubt that the end of the Cold War has
rejuvenated identity debates in Japan, and many have raised questions
about what Japan’s responsibilities are to the East and the West.162 But
the very fact that there are still identity debates to be had points to the
continued impact of Japan’s prewar stigmatization in shaping Japanese
responses. Despite all of Japan’s economic successes, the country still
remains an outsider at some level. As noted in Chapter 2 , pursuing a
strategy intended to correct stigmatizing attributes can never succeed
entirely in solving ontological security problems: the taint of once
having had the discreditable attribute remains (hinting at the pos-
sibility that one can easily fall back) and a sense of inauthenticity

158
Matsuyama, “Outlook for U.S. Japan Relations,” pp. 48, 57.
159
Soroos, “Global Interdependence,” 220.
160
Matsuyama, “Outlook for U.S. Japan Relations,” p. 51.
161
See Maull, “Germany and Japan.”
162
See Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity.
190 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

(externally imposed and internally felt) threatens ontological security.

Japan has tried to complement its “corrective” strategy by positioning
itself as a bridge between West and East. However, because Japan’s
ultimate goal is to garner equal respect from the West, it has not been
able to commit entirely to the Asian prong of this strategy, not only
picking Western interests over the Eastern ones when the two seemed
to conflict but also often undermining its own efforts in the region by
questionable actions such as ex-Prime Minister Koizumi’s 2001 visit
to the Yasukini War Shrine. By trying to play up both aspects of its
identity, but not being able to guarantee one and commit to the other,
at some level, Japan remains mired in its own history of outsiderness.
I will have more to say about this in the concluding chapter.
On the other hand, Japan continues to devote a very small percent-
age of its GDP to defense expenditure, despite the absence of evidence
suggesting that “the Japanese public perceives that their country has
unusual immunity from military threat”163 and opinion polls show-
ing that only “49 percent believe that the United States would provide
assistance if Japan were attacked.”164 Despite these beliefs, less than
10 percent of those polled support an increase in military spending.
This reluctance has puzzled many IR experts, especially realists, who
inevitably end up arguing that this unnatural state of affairs will end
sooner or later.165 As Katzenstein and Sil note,166 most of the 1990s
was characterized by this type of scholarship on East Asia, advanc-
ing the argument that the continent, including Japan, was “ripe
for rivalry” and violent conflict.167 Yet neither Asia in general nor
Japan has reassumed an aggressive foreign policy posture. Liberal
approaches168 may attribute Japanese unwillingness to re-arm to the

163
Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida Defense Doctrine,” 392.
164
Nihon Keizai Shimbun poll as reported in Chai, “Entrenching the Yoshida
Defense Doctrine,” 392.
165
For a review of this literature, see e.g. Katzenstein and Okawara, “Japan,
Asian-Pacific Security,” 154–6, 167, 169, 178–80; Kang, “Getting Asia
Wrong,” 61–2.
166
“Rethinking Asian Security,” p. 1. This article also provides compelling
critiques of both realist and liberal readings of Asian international relations.
167
E.g. Bracken, Fire in the East; Betts, “Wealth, Power and Instability”;
Friedberg, “Ripe for Rivalry.”
168
Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 130. To be fair, Owen argues the same
logic applies to Western Europe as well, but he never demonstrates why
liberalism makes Japan particularly pacifist.
From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen 191

nature of the Japanese post-World War II system, but it is not clear

why a liberal domestic system should have such a singular effect only
on Japan, or why Japan should be so conflicted about foreign policy
in the post-Cold War world.
Many observers are rightly skeptical that traditional theories can
predict outcomes in Asia. For instance, Kang argues that traditional
theories derived from the experience of European states fail to account
for the Asian system and that Japan does not re-arm to the level it
could because it has no intention of challenging the United States.169
Let us now see if introducing concern for status as a variable helps us
make better sense of Japan’s behavior, especially in the decades imme-
diately following the humiliating defeat of 1945.

From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen: changing status

standards
Japan has been considered by outsiders and especially by Westerners to be
an enigmatic country. (Takashi Inoguchi and Kinhide Mushakoji, “The
Japanese Image of the Future,” p. 217)

Despite numerous differences in the details, the overarching narrative

in Japan’s transformation post-World War II is strikingly similar to
the case of Turkey as discussed in Chapter 3. Here, too, we are faced
with a country that went from being perceived as a threat to the West
to being a peaceful participant in the international system and its
institutions. It is often assumed, mistakenly, that seven years of US
occupation and the subsequent security alliance with Japan explains
all that there is to know about Japan’s postwar policy choices. It is
beyond a doubt that these were formative experiences for Japan;
nevertheless, the Japan that has emerged from the postwar period is
not necessarily one that the Americans imagined or desired. Japan
has kept making her own choices, with Japanese leaders skillfully
navigating the constraints imposed by both the occupation and the
San Francisco system. It is not possible to explain this outcome with-
out understanding how the concern for status in the international
system significantly shaped the domestic and foreign policy strategies
of Japan after World War II.

169
Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong,” 77.
192 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

We saw in the fi rst section of this chapter how prewar Japan was
motivated by the same desire to overcome the civilization standards
that plagued Turkey’s behavior. By the time World War II broke
out, these standards – at least in their explicit, quasi-legalized form
(through the League of Nations) – were becoming obsolete, making
way for a more teleological view of human development and progress
centered on the concept of modernity. Old-fashioned justifications
for imperialism focused on a civilizing mission had fi rst been dis-
carded for the tutelage justifications of the League of Nations, but
even before the war, anti-colonialism movements had been causing
the Western imperial powers headaches in Palestine, Algeria, India,
and elsewhere.
Japan, however, seemed to have missed the memo about overseas
imperial enterprises being on their last legs. Japan’s quest for inclusion
in the civilization of Western powers, which had started as an attempt
to save itself from the fate of colonization, reached a feverish national-
ist-imperialist pitch in the interwar period. This was a Japan that was
manifesting the worst aspects of Western civilization – i.e. imperial-
ism and condescension – through a military regime duly propped up
and legitimized at home by reference to how the West had been acting
until then, on the one hand, and also by the emperor divinity cult, on
the other. It should also be acknowledged, however, that part of the
reason that Japan’s actions seemed so beyond the pale, with all due
respect to the Asian countries’ suffering under Japan’s advances, had
something to do with the fact that the civilization standards and the
norms of the international system had shifted. Interwar Japan was
an anachronism. There is something understandable about the joy
the average Japanese felt about a declaration of war with the United
States. Moreover, the juxtaposition of that irrational exuberance with
the feelings of regret and skepticism about Japan’s advance in China,
which were much more rational from a materialistic point of view, is
telling. The particular evolution of the international system has often
allowed the West to create monsters in its own image,170 and saddle
them with all of the guilt. This is rather an ironic by-product of the

170
I am not claiming that Western civilization is the inventor of aggressive
expansion. However, the particular kind of imperialism that Japan was
manifesting was a European-style imperialism, with aggressiveness of
colonization justified with a rhetoric of civilizing mission.
From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen 193

established-outsider dynamic in the international system. This is not

to say that Japan does not deserve blame, but rather points to a lar-
ger causal complexity that constantly favors early rule-makers of the
system over latecomers in assigning blame.
The way Japan was defeated separates this case from the cases of
Turkey and Russia. The utter and complete destruction wrought by
the two atomic bombs humiliated and traumatized Japan in a way
that we do not see in the other two cases. Some observers, including
several in Japan, have concluded from this defeat and Japan’s early
experience with Perry’s black ships that it requires foreign interven-
tion to shake itself out of institutionalized impasses. There is some
truth in this observation if it is interpreted not to mean that Japan
is beholden to foreign powers, but rather to point to a pattern we
see in other cases. The pattern is that because of the particular way
Japan entered this international system, the judgment of the West
has always been a motivating factor in domestic debates and for-
eign policy decisions. Interestingly enough, in a 1973 article Johan
Galtung also observed that Japan’s willingness to cooperate with
the American occupation itself had something to do with status con-
cerns (using a very questionable analogy to make an otherwise valid
point): “she was occupied by somebody very high up. Occupation is
not unlike rape: it becomes almost an honor if only the status gap is
sufficient and positive … Had the situation been somewhat different,
had Chiang-Kai-Shek been the occupier of Japan in 1945, we would
have hypothesized a stream of incidents and rebellion.”171 I believe he
is correct about speculation of a hypothetical Chinese invasion. What
helped along Japanese cooperation with the West, as represented by
the United States, was the worldview that Japanese had internalized
long before US troops arrived in Japan. As Japanese scholar Harumi
Befu has observed, Japan suffers from “auto- Orientalism” or “do-it-
yourself Orientalism,” just like Turkey and Russia: “Said, of course,
focused on the Middle East for the Orientalized people, but a similar
Orientalizing process took place in other parts of the world, includ-
ing Japan … where the Japanese accepted the Western-centric scheme
of the universe and believed in Westerners’ value judgments about
Japan’s backwardness.”172
171
Galtung, “Japan and Future World Politics,” 366.
172
Befu, “Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and the Japanese Identity,” as quoted in
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 7.
194 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

In any case, while the defeat itself was traumatic, it did not end
Japan’s quest for status; it merely transformed its dominant mani-
festation. Almost every scholar who writes about anything related to
Japan mentions that the Japanese care deeply (and always have) about
their ranking among nations.173 Other themes that constantly emerge
from the postwar literature are, how disillusioned the Japanese were
until their GNP carried them to a top rank; how the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics marked a defi nite shift in the mood of the country; and how
important international organization memberships were for Japan.174
The economy-fi rst doctrine of Yoshida was chosen deliberately.
Besides the obvious benefits of economic development, emphasiz-
ing economic growth and trade was the only way a country could
advance, status-wise, within an international system dominated by
two powers. Furthermore, this choice was very much in line with the
dominating normative discourse in the international system, which
had shifted from civilization to development. It also allowed Japan
to increase its stature by presenting itself as a model of successful
Asian development. This course was sustainable and had legitimacy
because it delivered the kind of power-prestige that the domestic audi-
ence demanded. The new state identity delivered ontological secur-
ity by allowing the Japanese people to hold onto their hierarchical
worldview175 and their view of Japan’s right to a high stature without
utilizing military strategies.
Despite the constraints, it should not be assumed that Japan had
no other choice. As noted above, what came to be called the Yoshida
Doctrine was very controversial from 1945 until 1960. Those on the
left favored a greater distance from the United States, and desired to
stand in solidarity with China and possibly even the Soviet Union. In
terms of curbing the influence of the left, the socialists and the com-
munists, the American occupation played a defi nite role, fi rst through
MacArthur’s ban on labor strikes, and second through the “Red
Purge” of the early 1950s. Nevertheless, the popularity of these views,
prior to 1960, which were demonstrated rather frequently through
work stoppages and riots, should not be summarily dismissed. On

173
Buruma, Inventing Japan; Islam, Yen for Development.
174
Jansen, Emergence of Meiji Japan; Buruma, Inventing Japan; Klien,
Rethinking Japan’s Identity.
175
Galtung also observes this about the Japanese on p. 362.
From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen 195

the flip side, the conservative nationalists, who were pro-capitalism,

but also supported more autonomy for Japan on security matters and
re-armament, had considerably more breathing room. This kind of
thinking was clearly more in line with US policies during the Cold
War years, and it is hard to imagine that as long as it kept cooperating
with the United States, a capitalist government made up of nation-
alists who were unapologetic to a communist China for past deeds
would have much to fear from the United States. The United States
would have been happy to see a re-armed Japan that was unapolo-
getically participating in American endeavors in Asia. But that is not
what emerged.
The point is not that such a government might have ended up
being a threat to US interests, but rather that the United States did
not have the willpower to stop it from emerging. In fact, the obser-
vations of scholars are that the 1945–60 period is fi lled with fears
and concerns that Japan would either turn too much to the right
or to the left. Just as American soldiers expected a fight when they
landed in Japan in 1945, for many years afterwards many out siders
did not stop fearing that Japan would revert to its authoritarian
ways. That Japan did not take either of these paths is even more
remarkable.
In the end, there are compelling reasons to think that what made
the middle-ground Yoshida Doctrine – as well as pacifism – popular
and worth sacrifice is what made Kemal’s Europeanization and secu-
larization project compelling in Turkey three decades before. Both
strategies tapped into the thirst for and obsession with international
power-prestige, which is a constant for the populations of these
semi-peripheral, insider-but-outsider countries with imperial pasts.
Obviously, the economy-fi rst doctrine delivered material benefits as
well, but it is not for naught that the Japanese were more interested
in the relative ranking of their GNP than in their absolute purchasing
powers or objective living conditions.176 It was this rank that allowed
Japan to re-enter the world stage with her head held high. And to
extend the analysis into the present day, as long as the power-prestige
needs are met at that level, support for re-armament in Japan will
continue to fail to garner popular support.

176
Badgley, “Japan’s Nonmilitary Road”; Bailey, Postwar Japan; Clesse,
Vitality of Japan.
196 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

Furthermore, in the Japanese case, a side strategy for status enhance-

ment has revolved around attempts to position the country in a medi-
ator or bridging role between the East and the West. Here we see
an even clearer example of the strategy whereby one inserts oneself
between the haves and have-nots, as holding the defi nitive interpret-
ation of the norms of inclusion. From the 1950s onward, Japan did
start to formulate a clear strategy of influence in Asia through trade,
but also presented itself to both the United States and Asian countries
as the Asian model for economic success. All of Japan’s involvement
in Asia bear this point out, from the Bandung Conference of 1955 to
the Asian Development Bank. Such a strategy is often framed as pro-
gressive and beneficent, but it in fact reinforces the status hierarchies
in the international system, and assured for Japan a more privileged
position vis-à-vis their Asian neighbors, at least during the Cold War.
That Asian countries received this offer of assistance with some skep-
ticism is further evidence of that fact.
Of the three cases under investigation, Japan is the most successful
example of charting an alternative route to high stature by exempli-
fying dominant norms of the international system, though how well
Russia will do in the future remains to be seen. If Turkey’s commit-
ment to its post-defeat identity has proven the most durable, Japan’s
commitment has proven to be the most fruitful. Part of this has to do
with the international context that Japan was operating in. Japan was
certainly helped by the Cold War dynamics in this endeavor.
During the process of writing this book, I had the occasion to tell
many Turkish acquaintances about my subject-matter and case selec-
tion. Almost without fail, I would get one of two responses (I am
paraphrasing): “Why Japan? Surely they do not have the same inse-
curities we do!”177 and “The Japanese did it the right way: they devel-
oped economically without compromising their identity. We should
have followed their model!” I fi nd these responses rather interest-
ing, and I suspect that Japan specialists would fi nd them amusing.
Given the foreign origins of Japan’s constitution, let alone things such
as the beef-eating fashions of the Meiji period, it is difficult to claim
that Japan’s identity has never been “compromised.” Yet I believe that
these casual comments are picking up a major difference between the
Turkish and Japanese cases, and that difference is mostly traceable to

177
Nobody objected to the inclusion of Russia for some reason.
From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen 197

the fact that Japan was defeated at a later period than the Ottoman
Empire.
Japan’s relative distance to the “established” core before defeat was
not unlike the Ottoman Empire’s: grudgingly recognized by the inter-
national society as a great power, but not treated equally because
of differences in inherent characteristics such as race (and religion).
The material conditions Japan faced after defeat were even worse
than Turkey: a devastated economy, a country in ruins, and occupa-
tion by US forces. Despite the heavy level of American interference,
Japan was able to fashion a successful strategy out of these condi-
tions. As discussed in Chapter 2 , the normative criteria for respect in
the international system had changed by the time World War II was
over. The emphasis had shifted from displaying signs and markers of
modern civilization to displaying markers of economic success and
“development.” This allowed Japan to pursue a strategy of emulation
that left more room for preserving surviving Japanese social traits. In
other words, while the Turkish strategy of emulation (“correction”)
hinged on wholesale reformulation of all sorts of cultural practices
that fell under the rubric of state authority (in an attempt to convince
the Western powers of Turkey’s “inherent” greatness and fitness for
“civilization”), after World War II, Japan was able to focus status-
enhancement efforts on economic practices.
Japan’s ascent on the status ladder was helped by the emergence
of two distinct camps in the international system in the Cold War
period. As far as general state behavior was concerned, the assimila-
tory pull of the ideal-typical Westphalian state norm had remained
intact from the previous period, but especially as far as the economic
practices of this ideal state were concerned, there were two com-
peting ideologies. This allowed, on the one hand, Japan to improve
its status quickly, for it is easier to rise in a smaller group, and on
the other hand, gave maneuvering room to Japan to parlay its new
alliance into social capital by taking the role of a norm transmit-
ter. Of the three cases, Japan used tactics for status advancement
most successfully, quite deliberately attempting to position itself as
a role model for Asian countries and/or newly independent colonies.
Turkey’s similar efforts in the interwar period to position itself as
an Asian/Muslim power that had succeeded in joining “civilization”
could only be directed to the very limited number of sovereign states
which could learn such lessons.
198 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

The end of the Cold War has hurt this balance, but has not destroyed
it. The two problems that Japan has faced in the post-Cold War period
are the emerging normative criteria which are moving away from pure
traditional understanding of economic development to more postmod-
ern values, and the convergence of the two Cold War camps, which
has increased the number of countries with access to core privileges.
However, I would argue that having succeeded in largely erasing its
postwar stigmas, Japan is unlikely to experience any radical ruptures
in foreign policy in the future. Despite the growing domestic demand
for Japan to take a more prominent role in international affairs, the
analysis here supports the predictions of constructivist scholarship on
Japan that any such expansion in the future will not take a military
turn.178
Nevertheless, the fact that Japan still does not have the stature com-
mensurate with its material power is a demonstration of the reality
that Japan still feels the effects of the historical established-outsider
dynamic of the international system. Ironically, Japan’s insecurities
are partly to blame for this prestige gap. One of the main current
threats to Japan’s status in the international system stems from an
issue not unlike those faced by contemporary Turkey: namely Japan’s
trouble with facing its past crimes, especially the atrocities of World
War II. Japan’s reluctance to take full responsibility for its wartime
actions remains a source of tension in its relationships with both Asia
and the West. In 2007, much to Japan’s consternation, the US House
of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Japan for crimes
of sexual exploitation committed by the Japanese military during
World War II.
That crimes of World War II remain an issue for Japan should be
surprising given the much greater lengths Japan has gone to, to face its
past compared to Turkey. Japanese military leaders were brought to
trial and punished after World War II, and Japan had formally apol-
ogized for many of its actions, including the now controversial sex
slaves issue. When controversies flare over “comfort women” or visits
to the Yasukuni war shrine, Japanese leaders are actually retracting
apologies for actions Japan has accepted guilt over previously. Given

178
See also Katzenstein and Okawara, “Japan, Asian-Pacific Security”;
Katzenstein and Sil, “Rethinking Asian Security”; as well as Katzenstein,
Cultural Norms.
From Kamikaze pilots to radio salesmen 199

Japanese postwar commitment to pacifism, these retractions are espe-

cially puzzling.
Japanese nationalists who cling onto a whitewashed version of
Japanese history might represent only a minority, but controversies
over Japan’s wartime behavior would not be flaring up with such fre-
quency if the construction demonstrated in the above resolution did
not resonate with Japanese national identity. An interesting point of
contrast is with Germany; oppositional groups in Japan who push
for a more critical examination of the state’s past often draw upon
the German example: “Japan, it was held, had not sufficiently ‘mas-
tered the past’ and should look to [Germany] as a model … Even
the term for ‘mastering the past’ (kako no kokufuku) was invented
in 1992 to translate the German Vergangenheishewaltigung.”179
Despite arguably being the less malevolent of the pair during the war,
a present-day comparison ends with the conclusion that Japan has not
been able to deal with the stigmatization accompanying its wartime
actions as well as Germany. Germany’s reconciliation efforts, how-
ever, have to be contextualized against Germany’s reintegration into
Europe.180 Whereas Japan’s exact placement between East and West
still remains open to question, the postwar trajectory of Germany has
been securely anchored in Europe. Whatever difficulties Germany has
had reconstructing its national identity have been tempered by the
affi rmation provided by the European identity of Germany. There is
an obvious irony here in the fact that even in such a context-specific
historical matter, the established-outsider dynamic and the pattern of
evaluating oneself (and coming up short) according to Western stan-
dards is perpetuated.
Unlike Germany, Japan, despite its economic stature, is securely
anchored neither in Asia nor among the great powers of the inter-
national system.181 Japan stands apart from colonized Asia as a
former colonizer. At the same time, Japan is not completely comfort-
able among Western powers either. As Shogo Suzuki notes, Japan is
a “frustrated great power.” Frustrated great powers believe that they
are not given the social equality and the privileges they deserve.182
Japan remains a frustrated great power mainly because of its World

179 180
Konrad, “Entangled Memories,” 96. Ibid., 98.
181
Klien, Rethinking Japan’s Identity, p. 6.
182
Suzuki, “Seeking ‘Legitimate’,” 49.
200 “The children”: Japan (1945–1974)

War II legacy and subsequent commitment to pacifism. Pacifism,

which has gone a long way in obscuring the past stigma of Japanese
military aggressiveness, has come at a price: it has kept Japan out of
decision-making processes in matters of international security.183
The Japanese right consider the anti-militarism of Japanese society
a consequence of the “brainwashing” of the occupation years.184 They
believe that Japan was robbed of its sense of national pride and emas-
culated by a hypocritical West which would not apologize for its own
actions. This is why they want to revise Japan’s apologies and recon-
struct a nation proud of its own history. In their view, only such a
nation can once again create a strong military and reassert Japan’s
significance on the world stage. However, just as in the Turkish case,
it is precisely these efforts to recapture Japan’s pride which drive Japan
away from a position of influence in Asia and, by extension, the inter-
national system. Such is the irony of ontological insecurity created
by stigmatization: it is a snake which feeds on its own tail. Just like
Turkey, Japan has to learn to leave the patterns of the past behind,
but if even Japan cannot overcome the effects of its stigmatized past,
what does that imply for the prospects of others in the international
system? I will revisit this question in the concluding chapter.
183
Ibid., 52.
184
Suzuki, “Strange Masochism.”
5 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia
(1990–2007)

Russia’s identity crisis has made it difficult to formulate and pursue a

clear and consistent policy toward the outside world.
Andrei Tsygankov, “From International Institutionalism to
Revolutionary Expansionism”

So much of Russian thinking about foreign affairs seems to converge

around the idea that there is a conspiracy to prevent Russia resuming its
great power status and to halt the “natural” restoration of the Russian
imperial complex in some form.
Guardian, March 22, 1997

Boris N. Yeltsin, speaking on Independence Day, told Russians their

country remains a great international power, one that is respected instead
of feared.
News Service reports, June 13, 1997

Who lost Russia … our new rival? Neither ally nor partner …
Washington Times, February 18, 1998

There is enough uncertainty … about the wisdom of President Vladimir

Putin’s new pro-western foreign policy. Is he trying to join the west, or is
he trying to use it?
Financial Times, April 15, 2002

For the fi rst time, the Russian president directly questioned the legiti-
macy of the approaches, principles, evaluation criteria and even the very
ideology of the West in relations with the rest of the world.
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union, December 12, 2004

It’s time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin’s Russia as an enemy of the

United States.
The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2006

201
202 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

Introduction
Is Russia, the former Soviet Union, an ally of the United States and
Europe, an enemy of the West, or neither? The jury is still out, and
Russian leaders have been giving out confusing signals since the offi-
cial end of the Cold War.1 From Yeltsin’s drunken ramblings to the
supposed exposure of Putin’s soul, 2 Western observers have not been
able to figure out a way to read Russia’s intentions. Every couple of
years, some policy expert defi nitively proclaims that Russia is a friend.
The next year some incident suggests the exact opposite. If Russia was
a riddle wrapped in an enigma during Soviet years, it has since then
become a matryoshka doll of foreign policy gestures.
The goal of this chapter is to analyze the foreign policy choices
Russia has made since the downfall of the Soviet Union, and sug-
gest that Russia’s actions make sense only in a framework of status-
seeking in a socially stratified international society of established and
outsiders. The status standards that Russia faces now are quite dif-
ferent than those Russia, Japan, or Turkey faced in the last centuries.
Therefore, Russia’s behavior in the last decades gives us important
clues about the future of international society and the future impact
of status-seeking behavior within this society.
As with the previous two chapters, Chapter 5 is divided into three
sections. The fi rst section gives an overview of Russia’s relation-
ship with international society and its status standards prior to the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Both imperial Russia’s and the Soviet
Union’s relationship with international society will be briefly con-
sidered as a precursor to the post-Cold War period. The second sec-
tion offers a narrative of the choices Russia made within the foreign
policy sphere after the demise of its empire, as well as the domestic
debates about which direction Russia should take to regain its sta-
tus and overcome its stigmatized position. Of the three cases under
investigation, Russia has come closest to dominating international
society as a great power, so it is not surprising that Russian domes-
tic debates are the most explicit about status-seeking motivations.

1
Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 119, 132–5.
2
President George W. Bush’s remark that he looked into Putin’s soul. See e.g.
Slevin and Baker, “Bush Changing Views,” 26.
Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban? 203

The third section will analyze this narrative within the framework
discussed in Chapter 2 in regard to responses to stigmatization.

Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban?

Thus, Utkin argues, the standard interpretations of Peter’s role in Russian
history – that he either made Russia part of Europe, or that he destroyed
traditional Russia but did not succeed in Europeanizing it – are both mis-
placed … Rather, the reforms served as a shield which allowed Russia to
maintain its independence and originality while it was at the same time
included in the sphere of European culture. (Iver Neumann, Russia and the
Idea of Europe, p.191)

Russia’s “Westernization” project was the fi rst of its kind 3 in the

history of the modern states system, and, as we saw in previous
chapters, was replicated to some degree by all other premodern
empires struggling to withstand European expansion. In fact,
Neumann notes that “Trotsky reminds that Russia was one of the
fi rst countries to experience the pangs of globalization emanating
from the European core … [The] discovery of Russia by the evolv-
ing European state system was part of that era we think of as the
‘age of European discovery.’”4 The initiator of the modernization
project conceived in response was Peter the Great, 5 who introduced
Western technologies, practices, beliefs, and personnel,6 changed
the language of the state,7 changed the title of the ruler from tsar to
imperator, and moved the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg.8
Peter’s reforms had the consequence of successfully making Russia a

3
See Watson, “Russia and the European States System,” pp. 61–6, for an
overview of Russia’s political development trajectory until this juncture.
4
Neumann, “Review,” 350.
5
Reign: 1682–1725. Although, just as in the Ottoman case with Mahmud II,
the inception of borrowing from the West pre-dates Peter’s efforts, at least as
far back as his grandfather Alexis.
6
And just as in the Ottoman and Japanese cases, Russian attitudes toward the
culture which accompanies these innovations were dismissive at fi rst: “They
saw that to do this they must learn the military and also the administrative
and manufacturing skills of the West, which the Russians disparagingly
described as ‘khitry,’ meaning clever and tricky.” Watson, “Russia and the
European States System,” p. 63.
7
French became the medium of communication for the upper classes.
8
Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 11.
204 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

player of some importance in the European states system. The main

rival of Russia at this time was the Ottoman Empire, and it was
Peter’s desire to forge an anti-Ottoman alliance that led him on his
European travels during the fi rst decade of his reign.9 However, the
reforms inspired by these travels fi rst bore fruit in the Russian vic-
tory over the Swedes in 1709, leading to Russia’s emergence as the
predominant Baltic power.10 His campaigns against the Ottomans
were mostly failures.11
It would be a mistake to assume that Russia gained entry12 into
the great power club of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries sim-
ply by adopting a few reforms or through military victory alone.
What made Russia successful where the Ottoman Empire and Japan
failed subsequently was the Russian state’s success in challenging
the meaning of “Europe.” As Neumann demonstrates convincingly,
throughout the eighteenth century, “[t]he Russian state formulated,
disseminated and insisted upon a geographical defi nition of Europe
as stretching to all the most populous parts of Russia. The idea
that Europe ends and Asia begins at the Urals was fi rst presented
by a Russian geographer.”13 The Ottoman Empire also attempted
something similar in the nineteenth century, with some success –
i.e. the Ottoman Empire was also named a European power in
1856; however, the Russian project was more successful because
the Russians already had the other characteristic necessary for
inclusion: Christianity. Especially in the eighteenth century, mem-
bership of the Westphalian states system hinged on religion and
geography.
However, around the time Russia made its case for inclusion as a
European power, Western Europe went through some fundamental
changes, starting with the French Revolution. In a way, Russia became
an “outsider” inside the new European society of states almost as

9
Watson, “Russia and the European States System,” p. 63.
10
Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 11.
11
Interestingly, Peter the Great is known in Turkish history as Peter the
Madman.
12
In fact, prior to the Westernization efforts of Golitsyin, the chief minister
of Regent Sofia (Peter’s predecessor), the Russian state was not recognized
as part of the system at all – as far as the Europeans were concerned, it was
ranked lower than even the Ottoman Empire. Watson, “Russia and the
European States System,” p. 66.
13
Ibid., p. 12.
Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban? 205

soon as it managed to gain entry to the club.14 Russia achieved what

no other Eastern agrarian empire had managed to achieve by becom-
ing a major participant in the Concert of Europe, but the concert itself
was very much a product of eighteenth-century politics – revolving
around the idea of dynastic legitimacy and reciprocity. As soon as
Russia gained entry to the great-powers club, the ground underneath
began to shift as the effects of the French Revolution became more
and more discernible in Western Europe.
In hindsight, there was plenty of irony in the developments of the
early nineteenth century. Having played a leading role in the defeat of
Napoleon, Russians felt somewhat secure15 about their standing and
stature for the fi rst time since their engagement with Europe: “The
journalist Nikolai Polevoi wrote, ‘How can a European boast of his
puny little fist? Only the Russian has a real fist, a fist comme il faut,
the ideal of a fist. Indeed, there is nothing reprehensible in that fist,
nothing base, nothing barbaric. On the contrary, it possesses a great
deal of significance, power, and poetry.’”16 Yet, the same develop-
ments which had produced Napoleon were continuing to work in this
period of perceived Russian success and undermining Russia’s pos-
ition in Europe as a result. In fact, we may hypothesize that Russia’s
unexpected success against Napoleon had the effect of shielding the
Russian monarchy from criticism from below and delayed the con-
sideration of reforms taking place in Western Europe. Therefore
Russia was in some ways a victim of its own brief success. There is

14
Even before the developments of the nineteenth century, many in Europe
were skeptical about the success of Russian transformation. The following
passage from Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762) is illustrative of the
European mindset vis-à-vis the Russians in the eighteenth century:
“The Russians will never be truly civilized, since they have been civilized
too early. Peter had a genius for imitation. He did not have true genius, the
kind that creates and makes everything out of nothing. Some of the things he
did were good; most of them were out of place. He saw that his people was
barbarous; he did not see that it was not ready for civilization. He wanted
to civilize it when all it needed was toughening. First he wanted to make
Germans and Englishmen, when he should have made Russians. He prevented
his subjects from ever becoming what they could have been by persuading
them that they were something they are not.” See Book 2, Chapter 8
15
Almost too secure – the boasts of Russians in this period smack of the kind
of bravado discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 2 .
16
Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century, p. 69.
206 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

a similarity between these developments and those that befell Japan

leading up to and after World War I. Just as post-World War I Japan,
which had briefly caught up with the West in material terms, was
an anachronism, displaying the values of an already disappearing
imperialist age, post-Napoleonic Wars Russia, unbeknownst to itself,
was also quickly becoming a relic from an age of dynastic privileges.
Some in Russia saw the developments in Western Europe as a
betrayal of true European ideals as embodied in the ancien régime.
Nicholas especially was trapped by his failure to understand the
significance of these changes. While Nicholas envisioned Russia as
the “gendarme of Europe” and himself a noble defender of the sta-
tus quo, public and elite opinion in Western Europe perceived the
actions of Russia, even those against the Ottoman Empire, as bar-
baric.17 The Russian state, on the other hand, represented itself as
the “true Europe.”18 In the meantime, Europeans continued to look
upon Russia as a learner.19 In that sense, even though imperial Russia,
compared to the Ottoman Empire or Japan, was more successful in
gaining formal entry to the European society of states, Russia’s iden-
tity as a European power was never entirely complete: “Doubts about
the ability of Russians to internalize [European] values were … fre-
quently voiced … Parallels, political or otherwise, were frequently
drawn between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.”20 However, Russia
stands out among the other cases as the only one whose perceived
power was exaggerated rather than downplayed.21 This was as true of
imperial Russia as it was of the Soviet Union.
Nicholas’s failure to read the new international system ultimately
led to the Russian failure in the Crimean War, because he “did not
understand that his personal friendship with conservative English
aristocrats such as the Duke of Wellington and Lord Aberdeen,
the British prime minister, would not guarantee England’s friendly
behavior as a state.”22 Historians have observed that “Nicholas lived

17
Ibid., p. 71. For instance, “Lord Clarendon, the British foreign secretary,
called the [Crimean] war a struggle for ‘the independence of Europe,’ for
‘civilization’ against ‘barbarism.’” Britain and France ended up declaring war
on Russia on the side of the Ottoman Empire.
18
Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 194.
19
Neumann, Russia as Europe’s Other, p. 27.
20 21
Ibid., p. 60. Bunce, “Domestic Reform,” 138.
22
Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century, p. 71.
Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban? 207

in a world of ‘dynastic mythology’23 and placed excessive reliance

on personal contacts and ties of blood and friendship within the
European elite.”24 The debacle of the Crimean War, however, gave
Westernizers the edge they were hoping for. The Westernizers were
also a by-product of the Napoleonic Wars: the officers who took part
in the occupation of Paris “were impressed by the contrast between
its freedoms and prosperity and the ‘bestiality and arbitrariness’ that
greeted them at home.”25 Despite the external recognition of Russia
as a European power, it was becoming apparent domestically that
its developmental problems had not been overcome. Many believed
Russia to be backward and called for more freedom. The early half
of the nineteenth century had been a time of great turmoil domes-
tically for other European powers, as evidenced in the revolutions
of 1848. Russia had been spared these revolutions, but temporary
escape from this fate only fueled the discontent of disenfranchised
parties. 26 Coming off the high of the Napoleonic Wars, Nicholas had
been able to suppress the Westernizers, but after the Crimean War,
reforms could no longer be put off – and they were implemented by
Nicholas’s successor Alexander.
This was partly because the Slavophiles, who had high hopes about
the outcome of the war, also turned to criticize the Russian state
after defeat: “‘Sevastopol did not fall by accident,’ [Slavophile] Ivan
Aksakov wrote to his relatives. ‘Its fall was an act of God to expose
the true rottenness of the governmental system and all the conse-
quences of repression.’”27 Of course, as Robert English notes, the
Slavophiles were no less Europeanized than their Westernizer coun-
terparts: “Fundamental elements of Slavophilism were indeed bor-
rowed from European, primarily German, thinkers, from the idea of
‘organic’ nation to reverence for the traditional peasant commune.”28
Moreover, both groups looked to the past selectively to construct
their vision of the future. 29 In other words, just as in the Turkish
and Japanese cases, the Russian elite had very much internalized

23
See the discussion in Chapter 1.
24
Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century, p. 71.
25
English, Russia and the Idea of the West, p. 20.
26
See e.g. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist.
27
Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century, p. 86.
28
English, Russia and the Idea of the West, p. 20.
29
Billington, Russia in Search of Itself, p. 14.
208 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

the worldview emanating from Western Europe: and just as in those

cases, Russian disagreements in the nineteenth century were not about
the validity of that worldview but about what the right response to
Russia’s inferior position would be. While the Westernizers held that
everything had to be borrowed from the West, the Slavophiles argued
Russia had to preserve its unique civilization which was the source of
its strength.30 We have seen the articulation of identical positions in
both the Turkish and Japanese cases.
The Westernizing reforms of the previous centuries had not gone far
enough to please various sections of the intelligentsia who demanded
more. Alexander II tried to address the calls for reform by issuing
“The Great Emancipation Statute” in 1861, around the same time
the Ottoman Sultan was issuing his Tanzimat decrees, and Japan was
coming under the Meiji rule. The Statute freed the serfs but compen-
sated the landowners for their loss. Just as in the Ottoman Empire
and Japan, the reforms created their own backlash. Neither the peas-
ants nor the landowners were satisfied with the decree.31 Alexander
II, like Mahmud II in Istanbul, also attempted to reform the army,
and pushed through several civil and educational reforms. All in all,
Alexander’s reforms were the most comprehensive since Peter the
Great. Nevertheless, they can, at best, be described as stopgap mea-
sures intended to ensure the continuity of the system.
In fact, the debates in the nineteenth century for Russia revolved
very much around the same identity issues faced by Turkey and
Japan (whose debates had commenced at slightly later dates). James
Billington makes the same error as the experts in Turkish and Japanese
history when he argues that “no nation ever poured more intellectual
energy into answering the question of national identity than Russia,”32
although he is right to draw our attention to the fact that in Russia the
two sides, for a while at least, seemed more equally matched.
What originally ignited the debate were two monographs by Peter
Chaadaev: Philosophical Letter (1836) and Apology of a Madman
(1837). Describing Moscow as a “Necropolis,” Chaadaev (1837)

30
English, Russia and the Idea of the West, p. 21; see also Billington, Russia in
Search of Itself, for specific examples of thought from both sides.
31
Mikhailov and Shelgunov, Proclamation to the Younger Generation; Broido,
Apostles into Terrorists; Zaionchkovsky and Wobst, Abolition of Serfdom in
Russia.
32
Billington, Russia in Search of Itself, p. 12.
Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban? 209

nevertheless went on to argue that “Russia’s very lateness in devel-

opment would enable her to do better than Western nations.”33 Just
as their Japanese and Ottoman counterparts would argue only a few
decades later, the Slavophiles of Russia tried to fi nd virtue in Russia’s
“unique” civilization, “combining the virtues of the Orthodox faith,
Slavic ethnicity, and the communal institutions and decision-making
procedures of an overwhelmingly peasant population.”34 And Russia,
just like Turkey and Japan would be later, was conceived of as a civ-
ilization which would not only help itself but one that was uniquely
qualified to resolve the tensions created by modernity.
What distinguishes the Russian debate from the Ottoman and
Japanese ones is the fact that the Slavophiles were advancing these
claims right around the time the Westernizers seemed to be vindi-
cated by the reforms of Alexander II. In the Ottoman and Japanese
cases, we saw such views articulated strongly only after the attempts
to modernize following Western prescriptions – i.e. the Tanzimat and
Meiji periods – failed to erase stigmatization. In the Russian case, the
Slavophile position pre-dates the reforms – and was merely subdued
during their enactment. This difference most likely stems from the
longer engagement Russia had with modernization and Westernization
pressures. In any case, the Russian trajectory did converge with the
other cases after Alexander’s reforms – not only did they fail to defeat
the previous Slavophile objections, but created their own backlash.35
In Russia, too, then, liberalizing reforms and increased political
openness created expectations that could not be met. Just as new
recognitions given to religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire
actually increased the activities of secessionist national liberation
movements, the civil reforms in Russia served as a catalyst for oppos-
ition groups who now demanded a written constitution and a parlia-
ment. In response, in both countries, the reform period was followed

33 34
Ibid. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
35
And the purely materialist reading of these nineteenth-century reforms
is as misplaced in the Russian example as it is in the previous cases. The
Bolsheviks were as guilty of this as anyone else. For instance, Trotsky’s
explanation of the 1861 Emancipation Act as a moment of primitive
accumulation misses the identity dynamics involved in the situation (see
History of the Russian Revolution). By that time, these types of reforms had
come to be assessed by the Russian intelligentsia according to a rubric of
comparison with what was known/imagined about the “West.”
210 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

by a period of backlash and repression. In the Ottoman Empire, the

reign of Abdülhamid, which followed immediately after the Tanzimat
opening and recognition of the equal rights of all subjects, was a
period of extreme repression of Christians (e.g. the Armenian mas-
sacres of 1887–8). Similarly, in Russia, Alexander’s reforms were
severely curtailed by his son, Alexander III, and Alexander III’s son,
Nicholas II, at least until 1905, when Nicholas II reluctantly conceded
a parliamentary assembly.36 However, he was forced to relent because
of the growing unification and the increased violence of the oppos-
ition following the events of Bloody Sunday, January 9, 1905.37 None
of this did much to help Russia’s image abroad: Robert Service points
out that no imperial power before World War I was reviled by demo-
crats in Europe as much as the Russian Empire.38
In the events leading up to World War I, there were certain simi-
larities between the Russian and the Ottoman cases. As a result
of Bloody Sunday, Russia was ruled as a parliamentary monarchy
between 1905 and 1917; the Ottomans switched to a similar system
in 1908. Both countries entered World War I (on different sides) with
the hope of rejuvenating their global positions and stopping the dis-
solution of their empires. Russia emerged from World War I under
Bolshevik control, whereas Kemalist Turkey replaced the Ottoman
Empire. However, as discussed in Chapter 3, in terms of foreign pol-
icy, the Kemalist government of Ankara followed a very different path
than the Bolsheviks in Moscow. This is where the main difference
lies, but it should not obscure the fact that both regimes were dealing
with the problem of (the stigmatization of) backwardness.
Unlike the Kemalists, the Bolsheviks came to power as a result of
a popular, social revolution.39 Lenin and his comrades were ideo-
logically driven intellectuals, whereas Kemal and his followers were,
above all, pragmatist soldiers. In academic parlance, Russia’s was

36
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 1.
37
On that day, marchers, including women and children, were gunned down as
they walked to the palace to hand a petition to the tsar [January 22, 1905, in
the new style].
38
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 1. For period examples of Russia
being characterized as an Asiatic or Oriental country prior to the revolution,
see e.g. Farbman, “Present Situation in Russia”; Grovin, “Soviet Russia.”
39
For a discussion of revolutionary conditions, especially as they pertain to
Russia, see Motyl, “Why Empires Reemerge.”
Russia and the West: Émile or Caliban? 211

a bottom-up revolution, and Turkey’s top-down.40 What I want to

emphasize, however, is Georgi Derluguian’s point that the revolution-
ary movements in these countries were not radically different in terms
of developmental aspirations. Derluguian observes that “the modern
revolutions have a lot to do with the mobility of states in the geo-
graphical hierarchy and axial division of labor in the world-system.”41
He also links revolutions to status aspirations: “revolutions have been
at the radical extreme of the more usual reform efforts intended to
resist the downward decline of one’s group position (as a country
or putative nation) in the world’s ranking order.”42 In other words,
revolutions are wholesale attempts at countering “decline and back-
wardness, or their perceived effects on social, economic, and cultural
fields” by “restructuring the state and social composition of national
society.”43 Derluguian’s point is that, in essence, there is much alike
in what happened in Turkey and Russia – both had concerns about
“backwardness” which stemmed from the similarity in the social space
occupied by these two countries vis-à-vis the West. Whereas “liberal
national reformers (who sometimes were revolutionary, as Atatürk)
normally adhered to the Hegelian or Durkheimian ideas of historical
progress and order,” “Marxist-inspired revolutionaries rather saw the
answer in the state-creation of industrial proletariat because either
ideology associated industrial proletariat with modernity and univer-
sal salvation.”44 What both of these ideological programs had in com-
mon was the view of the state as the seat of salvation.
The different responses we fi nd to the “developmental” problem
in Bolshevik Russia versus Kemalist Turkey are fi rst and foremost
attributable to domestic factors such as “the class composition, out-
look and administrative capacities of the revolutionary elite.”45 The
difference in the ideologies, however, should not lead one to over-
look the many similarities between the regimes: “Both pursued shock
modernization programs that involved mass mobilization, nation and
state building, political centralization, as well as attempts at radi-
cal interventions in the realms of society and culture.”46 And what-
ever differences may have existed in ideologies substance-wise, the

40
Trimberger, Revolution from Above.
41
Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer, p. 9.
42 43 44 45
Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 315.
46
Khalid, “Backwardness and the Quest for Civilization,” 234.
212 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

ideological end-products in the two regimes resemble each other

quite a bit: “both regimes produced an official historiography that
shared many elements: a glorious foundational moment and a larger-
than-life founding figure; leadership by a group with clearly defi ned
goals, to which the founders remained unwaveringly loyal; and a
clear break from the past, so that all connections to the old regime
were downplayed.”47 Furthermore, what is remarkable is the fact that
both regimes went on to forcefully “civilize” peoples in the territories
under their control: “Both the Soviet and the Kemalist states had at
their disposal the baggage, common to modern European thought, of
evolution, backwardness and progress, of ethnic classification of peo-
ples, and, indeed, of orientalism.”48 Where they differed is in the out-
ward projection of the respective ideologies. Whereas the Bolsheviks
aimed to position themselves (along the earlier Slavophile lines) as
an international regime which was an alternative to the West, the
Kemalist regime aimed to claim its “rightful” place among the “civi-
lized” nations of the West.
The divergence of international strategies has to do with dif-
ferences in levels of ontological security of the new regimes. The
Ottoman Empire was defeated, dismantled, and occupied as a result
of World War I. The Kemalist regime did not emerge until 1920,
and did not gain control of the country until it managed to fight
off the occupation. Russia also suffered setbacks during World War
I, but that was before the Bolsheviks took control of the state and
withdrew49 the country from the war before it was over. They also
managed to keep the territory of the empire intact, and by 1921 had
reconquered some of the previously lost territory in the Caucasus. 50
This was a very significant difference – the Russian imperial hab-
itus survived into the Bolshevik era whereas the Turks had to face
the loss of their empire. In other words, the new Russian develop-
mentalist regime did not experience the ontological trauma of the
humiliation and confusion accompanying military defeat resulting
in imperial collapse.

47 48
Ibid. Ibid., 251.
49
Some argue that the Russian Army was in a better condition in 1916 than
it was in 1914. See Service, History of Modern Russia; Service, Russian
Revolution.
50
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 128.
Soviet Russia 213

Soviet Russia
During the nineteenth century, the Russian state represented itself as a
“true Europe” in a situation where the rest of Europe had failed in its
own tradition by turning away from the past values of the ancien regimes.
During the twentieth century, the Russian state represented itself as “true
Europe” in a situation where the rest of Europe had failed the best in
its own tradition by not turning to the future values of socialism. (Iver
Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 194)

The main difference between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey is

that Soviet Russia intended to secure its status in the world by pur-
suing its own unique developmentalist strategy, grounded in socialist
state planning. Recognizing the hostility of this strategy, the Western
powers initially treated the Soviet Union as an international pariah51
because “diplomatic recognition could not be granted a regime that
was founded on principles antithetical to Western values.”52 European
powers supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War.53 For their
part, Bolshevik leaders spoke aggressively about their expectation for
workers’ revolts in Europe.54
However, it would be a mistake to read Bolshevik policies as a
complete departure from the constraints of the normative context of
the international status hierarchy. The decade after the revolution is
remarkable for the pro-market orientation of the New Economic Policy
adopted by the Soviet Union.55 Matching the economic policy on the
international front was the Bolsheviks’ new-found interest in playing
by the normative rules of European diplomacy:56 “When they arrived
in Italy, the Bolshevik delegates were not wearing their old revolution-
ary uniforms, but instead the frock coats and striped trousers of the
traditional international diplomat.”57 Ringmar points out that in this

51
See Ringmar, “On the Ontological Status”; Ringmar, “Recognition Game”;
Francis, Russia from the American Embassy; Uldricks, Diplomacy and
Ideology; Debo, Survival and Consolidation.
52
Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” 123.
53 54
Ibid., 123. Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 120.
55
Ibid., pp. 123–49, 294.
56
Even Waltz acknowledges this development (Theory of International Politics,
pp. 127–8), but never asks the most interesting question about what he
observes: what do frock coats have to do with military power?
57
Laue, “Soviet Diplomacy,” p. 24; Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed, p. 140;
White, Origins of Détente; as cited in Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” 123.
214 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

decade the Bolsheviks were eminently concerned with being perceived

as a legitimate state, and followed the rules in order to get this recog-
nition from Europe.58 To this end, they continued to pursue two sets
of policies: presenting a diplomatic face to the West, and a revolution-
ary face to the East that was supposed to stand as the vanguard of
all the oppressed peoples.59 The main difference here with the strate-
gies implemented by former powers after defeat is that the diplomatic
veneer was intended as a cover for revolutionary activities.60
Faced with the growing threat of Nazi activities in the early 1930s,
the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations in 1934, emphasizing the
importance of collective security.61 Domestically, the developmental
project was bearing fruit under Stalin’s rule. The repressed economic
situation in the world market had rendered the New Economic Policy
moot, and the Soviet leaders therefore “embarked on a quest to build
a modern industrial base without the capitalists.”62 Derluguian argues
that three institutions underwrote the Stalinist military-industrial
enterprise: “the centralized and all-encompassing nomenklatura
system of political-bureaucratic appointment; the forced mobiliza-
tion of economic resources and manpower for the war effort; and
the establishment of national republics.”63 As the military-industrial
complex grew, Stalin came increasingly to defi ne the Soviet Union as
a great power equal to European powers.64 According to Ringmar, it
was the reluctance of Western powers to recognize the Soviet Union
as such65 that turned Stalin to Nazi Germany.66 If the Soviet Union
had been able to secure great power recognition within the existing
system, alignment with Nazi Germany would have been unnecessary,
since Stalin viewed the latter as the less preferable option.67

58
Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” 124.
59
Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the World, pp. 24–6.
60 61
Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” 125. Ibid., 125–6.
62
Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer, p. 295.
63
Ibid.
64
Erickson, Soviet High Command, pp. 475–7; Ringmar, “Recognition
Game,” 125.
65
See Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the World, pp. 41–3, for a discussion of
reasons behind Western reluctance, including the distaste over Stalin’s
purges.
66
Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” 126.
67
See Ringmar, “Recognition Game,” for a more detailed discussion of the
evidence for this reading of events.
Soviet Russia 215

After the war, the Soviet Union was a de facto great power.
However, as Ringmar demonstrates, the Soviets continued to feel a
degree of ontological insecurity vis-à-vis the United States and the
Western world.68 As Larson and Shevchenko point out, “early U.S.
acknowledgement of Soviet parity did not extend to the political and
diplomatic spheres.”69 As a result, the Soviet Union increasingly with-
drew from international activities that were led by the United States,
and sought to create its own sphere of alternative recognition. During
the Cold War years, the two competing constructions of Russia had
resurfaced, but with different emphases. The new manifestation of
the perception of Russia as a pupil or learner emphasized the Soviet
Union as the barbarian at Europe’s gate. This discourse simulta-
neously exaggerated the military threat posed by the Soviet Union70
and attributed moral weakness, laziness, and drunkenness to Russians
themselves.71 On the other hand, the view of Russia as “true Europe”
also persisted among a minority in the West, and was perpetuated
by the Soviet Union. This construction saw Russia as the land of the
future, the true resolution of the contradictions of European history.72
On the whole, however, “the Soviets’ impressive coercive capabilities
did not persuade Western states to accept the Soviet Union as a polit-
ical and moral equal.”73
Even the academic discourse on Russia during this period in the
West is telling. For instance, Karl A. Wittfogel made a career out
of arguing that Russia always had been (and always would be) an
objectively “Oriental” society. In a 1950 article, Wittfogel outlines
his argument:

On the managerial plane a much greater similarity exists between Oriental

despotism and the USSR … Oriental trends [such as the coercive devices of
a strong autocratic state] were by no means absent in pre-Mongol Russia.
But these trends were too weak to make early Russia marginally Oriental.
Russia crossed the institutional watershed when, under the Mongol rule,
from the middle of the thirteenth century to the end of the fi fteenth century,

68
Ibid., 128.
69
Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness,” 94.
70
Neumann, Russia as Europe’s Other; Bunce, “Domestic Reform.”
71
Neumann, Russia as Europe’s Other.
72
Ibid., p. 13; Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe.
73
Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness,” 95.
216 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

it was part of a marginal Oriental empire. It was during this lengthy period
of the Mongol Yoke – a period which, for a number of reasons, has been
slighted by most investigators – that the coercive and acquisitive techniques
of Eastern statecraft were vigorously imposed, making possible the con-
solidation of an Oriental autocratic and bureaucratic system of government
and society.74

Despite the social scientific language, it is difficult not to come away

from this passage with a feeling that it was the (Asian, Eastern,
Oriental) Mongols who “ruined” it for the Russians who may other-
wise have turned out as all white races are supposed to. The Soviet
apparatus is not a product of the various constellations of geographic,
ideological, economic, etc. factors but is somehow directly traceable
to the Mongolians of the thirteenth century who must have been car-
rying its prototype in their genes. In a 1963 article,75 Wittfogel goes
further to make a contorted argument that Russia was an Oriental
society of the “nonhydraulic” sub-type. Wittfogel was not the only
one making such arguments either; George Guins noted in a 1963
article in the Russian Review that “[b]asing judgment on the present
regime and the international policy of the U.S.S.R, many … scholars
believe that Russia belongs more to the East than the West.”76 Given
what was pointed out in the previous chapters, this is not particularly
surprising: owning or utilizing a stigmatized position, refusing to play
the game of the established, and trying to demand equal treatment
from a supposed position of strength ultimately end up reproducing
and in fact deepening the stigma.
To sum up, the Soviet developmentalist strategy from World War I
until the end of the Cold War, while very much being in response to
the problem of stigmatization, differed from the post-defeat strategies
of outsider states in several ways. First, having opted out of World
War I, the Bolsheviks were spared the ontological trauma of defeat.
Their initial recognition deficit was more akin to the experience of the

74
Wittfogel, “Russia and Asia,” 447, 450.
75
Wittfogel, “Russia and the East.”
76
Guins, “Russia’s Place in World History,” 361. Guins himself actually makes
an interesting and rather prophetic argument, given what happened after
Gorbachev came to power: “No nation can unite the whole world – Russia
no more than any other. If Russia may be said to have any historical mission,
it is to become a bridge between newly awakened Asia and the newly
reorganizing West.” See 367–8.
Soviet Russia 217

Ottoman Empire or Japan in the nineteenth century – the Bolshevik

regime was originally denied recognition because the principles it
embodied did not match European norms. In other words, because
the Russian Empire had not officially suffered defeat, its ontological
relationship with the international system moved into the twentieth
century with some continuity. This is also true of Japan until 1945.
What was different, however, compared to the nineteenth-century
situation of semi-sovereign states – including Russia – was the fact
that the Bolshevik regime itself had its own ideological program for
catching up with the West. Unlike the semi-peripheral powers of the
nineteenth century that had sought equal recognition by adopting
European manners, the Soviet Union demanded equal recognition
during the Cold War years for the success of its own domestic sys-
tem in producing great power capabilities. This equal recognition was
sought both by reinterpreting the teleological rhetoric of Western civ-
ilization to conclude that the Soviet state represented the final stage77
and by matching American endeavors in every symbolic gesture asso-
ciated with superpower status, from nuclear weapons to international
chess tournaments.78 Of course, it bears repeating that in terms of its
ontology, the Soviet model was no great break from either modernity
or Westernization. Wallerstein puts it best: “Leninism, which posed
itself as the radical opponent of Wilsonianism, was in fact its ava-
tar. Anti-imperialism was self-determination clothed in more radical
verbiage … One of the reasons ‘Yalta’ was possible was that there
was less difference in the programs of Wilson and Lenin than offi-
cial rhetoric maintained.”79 Derluguian also argues that liberalism
and Marxism had consensus on a key element: “the identification of
a unilinear historical progression moving through objectively exist-
ing stages of development.”80 Both ideologies argued (and believed
that) “all countries were moving, albeit at different speeds, along the
same evolutionary ladder leading towards the fi nal stage of perfec-
tion, which would be the end of history, whether in liberal society or
in communism.”81 As discussed in Chapter 2 , the Soviet model was
just as teleological as the modernization paradigm, and therefore very

77
Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe, p. 14.
78
Ringmar, “Recognition Game,”129.
79
Wallerstein, “World-System after the Cold War,” 2.
80
Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer, p. 69.
81
Ibid.
218 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

much a child of the Enlightenment mindset summarized by Gellner

and discussed in Chapter 1. Derluguian’s conclusion sums it up rather
well: “As Bourdieu observed, the strongest orthodoxy does not come
in one but usually two varieties, in the presumed antinomy of mutu-
ally exclusive positions.”82

Gorbachev and “new thinking”

In these circumstances, Gorbachev’s “new thinking” in foreign affairs
and domestic reforms can be understood as an attempt to refurbish the
Soviet state’s ideological appeal in the world. (Daniel Deudney and John
G. Ikenberry, “International Sources,” p. 106)

There is an extensive literature within IR that discusses the causes

of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.83
The main point of contention seems to be how much causality should
be attributed to the person of Gorbachev, and also how much of the
impetus for change came from domestic vs. international factors.
A detailed discussion of the reasons why Gorbachev acted the way
he did is beyond the scope of this project.84 However, there are cer-
tain aspects to this last period of Soviet thinking that highlight the
fact that, despite the Soviet state’s unprecedented success in military
industrialization in the semi-periphery, the stigmatization problems
of this social space were still plaguing the Soviet state.
For some time, it seemed that the Soviet state had found the semi-
periphery’s answer to the developmental gap and had managed to catch
up with the core capitalist countries. In the 1970s, the Soviet econ-
omy had the world’s second-greatest industrial capacity.85 However,

82
Ibid., pp. 69–70.
83
See e.g. Deudney and Ikenberry, “International Sources”; Mendelson,
“Internal Battles”; Mendelson, Changing Course; Checkel, “Ideas,
Institutions”; Checkel, Ideas and International Political Change; Arbatov,
“Russia’s Foreign Policy”; Bunce, “Domestic Reform”; Risse-Kappen,
“Ideas Do Not Float Freely”; Koslowski and Kratochwil, “Understanding
Change”; Evangelista, “Paradox of State Strength”; Evangelista, “Norms,
Heresthetics”; Brown, Gorbachev Factor; Herman, “Identity, Norms”;
Forsberg, “Power, Interests”; Snyder, “Russia”; Stein, “Political Learning.”
84
See Mendelson, Changing Course; Risse-Kappen, “Ideas Do Not Float
Freely”; Stein, “Political Learning,” for possible explanations of the
mechanisms behind the policy shift.
85
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 397.
Gorbachev and “new thinking” 219

the Soviet economy had started running out of steam, and its failures
were delayed only because of the unexpected Soviet windfall from the
oil crises of that decade. Agricultural policies were highly ineffective,
and the living standard of the average citizen was very poor. It need
not be pointed out that the Soviet obsession with gaining status parity
with the United States had something to do with the mismanagement
of resources and the biased attention paid to sectors with symbolic
value as great power markers.86
Gorbachev’s reforms were a response to the disastrous state of the
Soviet economy,87 but the way they were formulated and justified
spoke directly to Soviet concerns about international status: “This
strategy promised a magic solution, a shortcut to achieving truly
prominent status in the international system and political equality
vis-à-vis the West.”88 Deudney and Ikenberry point out that “new
thinking” is best seen as an attempt “to refurbish the Soviet state’s
ideological appeal in the world.”89 Unlike the Marxist rhetoric, how-
ever, the globalist outlook of the “new thinking” offered a “basis
for a cooperative relationship with the Western powers.”90 According
to “new thinking,” “the Soviet Union would chart a path to better
understanding of global problems, interdependence and the need to
cooperate, and the priority of ‘universal values.’”91 The similarity
between Gorbachev’s rhetoric here and the post-defeat discourse of
both Atatürk and Yoshida should be apparent to the reader.
Basically, already at this point the Soviet state had started to dis-
play a tendency toward the default strategy choice of defeated powers.
This does not mean that Gorbachev and his advisers necessarily
envisioned the demise of the Soviet Union; in fact, evidence points
to the contrary. Gorbachev, at least in the early years of his govern-
ment, continued to be a fi rm believer in Marxist-Leninism and had
no intention of taking either glasnost or perestroika to the point they
ultimately ended up going.92 What he did acknowledge, however, is

86
Hazan, Olympic Sports.
87
Deudney and Ikenberry, “International Sources,” 76.
88
Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness,” 97.
89
Deudney and Ikenberry, “International Sources,” 106.
90
Ibid.
91
Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness,” 97. They are paraphrasing
Gorbachev’s speech in FBIS Daily Report-Soviet Union, February 17, 1987,
FBIS-DRSU, 20.
92
Service, History of Modern Russia, pp. 443–8.
220 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

what Alexander II or Mahmud II had also admitted almost exactly

a century before: the Soviet system was falling short compared to
the Western alternative. He knew that the Soviet Union had either
lost or was about to lose the military competition. In other words,
while imperial collapse had yet to happen, military defeat was already
on the table, so it is not surprising that Gorbachev came to see the
world in similar terms as Atatürk and Yoshida. Having lost out on
the strategies of trying to rearrange the normative order, a corrective
strategy of emulation, especially one that built on Soviet strength in
the community of the stigmatized, was becoming the more attract-
ive alternative. By introducing reforms, what Gorbachev did was to
demand the rearticulation of the Soviet role in the world: instead of
being the exclusive leader of the downtrodden, i.e. the stigmatized
East and the South, who would lead them to the top by displacing
the established, the Soviet Union would now be the bridge, the medi-
ator between the established and the outsiders. The distance between
Gorbachev’s New Thinking and Yoshida’s understanding of Japan’s
relationship with Asia and Africa is a short one indeed. Furthermore,
just as in the Turkish and Japanese cases, despite outside appearances,
Gorbachev did not have unwavering support for his vision93 – he had
to earn that support by making a compelling argument that would
appeal to the sensitivities of the Russian people.
According to Gorbachev, the problems of the Soviet state would be
solved only if it could be reintegrated into the capitalist world econ-
omy on honorable terms. This desire further explains why secessionist
movements were not repressed by force.94 In that respect, the impact
of Gorbachev and his reforms repeat the story of the previous cen-
tury: the reforms were implemented in order to save the regime, but
brought about its demise instead. Once the Soviet Union collapsed,
the second condition for the preference of cooperative stigma strat-
egies was met: loss of imperial status. This brought to the fore an
unresolved question: “Long submerged under the czarist and then
Soviet empires, the Russians have never before been forced to defi ne
precisely who is a Russian and what the proper limits of Russian ter-
ritory should be; now they must fi nd answers.”95

93
Evangelista, “Norms, Heresthetics,” 30.
94
Derluguian, Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer, p. 128.
95
Goble, “Russia and Its Neighbors,” 79.
After the Soviet Union 221

After the Soviet Union: foreign policy choices

from Gorbachev to Putin
Is there a “right to be great”? Russia is not alone, but it is extreme in
claiming this right. What Russia wants is an agreement that it can control
the destinies of other nations; an agreement which reflects not its present
weakness but its past, its hopes, its future. (Guardian, March 22, 1997)
“We don’t want superpower status,” Mr. Putin told reporters during an
interview at his country house. “We believe this status is deliberately fos-
tered within the EU in order to remind [people] that Russia [used to be] the
evil Soviet Union.” (Washington Times, September 12, 2006)

After the ascent of Gorbachev to the General Secretariat in 1985, there

emerged three camps within Soviet politics that also shaped Russian pol-
itics after the demise of the Soviet Union. First, there was a pro-Western
group which had considerable influence over the Foreign Ministry in the
last years of the Soviet Union and early years of the Russian Federation
under Yeltsin’s rule.96 The pro-Western group of “International
Institutionalists”97 argued that the best option for Russia was political
and economic integration.98 This group believed that Russia is a natural
member of Western civilization and that the international environment
is, in general, friendly to Russian security:99 “Its discourse positions the
‘normal,’ ‘civilised’ world congruous with the West as the referent for
the Russian evolving identity.”100 According to this group, Russia’s main
priority should be liberalizing its domestic politics and economy.
Those holding “middle-ground” positions were the moderate lib-
erals and moderate conservatives, who may be called “‘statists’ or
‘liberal nationalists’.”101 Moderate liberals also favored a relatively
pro-Western policy but emphasized the uniqueness of Russia’s geopol-
itical position.102 Moderate liberals are sometimes called the “defensive

96
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 9.
97
Alternatively described as “liberals, democrats, Westernizers, Atlanticists.”
Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 533.
98
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 10; Tsygankov, “From International
Institutionalism,” 249.
99
Tsygankov, “From International Institutionalism,” 253–8.
100
Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 824.
101
Ibid., 825.
102
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 11. See also Kassianova, “Russia: Still
Open to the West?” 825.
222 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

realists” of Russia because while they do not believe Western inten-

tions are “inherently hostile,” they argue that as a competitor, the
West had no interest in preserving Russian strength.103 They suggested
that “Russia’s role is as a great Eurasianist power that stabilizes and
organizes the ‘heartland’ of the continent, serving as a buffer between
European and non-European civilization.”104
Moderate conservatives, on the other hand, while not entirely rul-
ing out cooperation with the West, believed that Russia should hold
onto its “sphere of influence” as a great power.105 This group is some-
times called the “aggressive realists” of Russia because they have
imperial tendencies, believing the external environment to be gen-
erally hostile to Russia’s interests.106 Like the moderate liberals, they
emphasized the cultural uniqueness of Russia, and its independent,
autarchic, Eurasian civilization that is especially suited for imperial
organization.107
Finally, there was (and is) an ultra-nationalist group devoted to the
revival of the Russian Empire.108 These “revolutionary expansion-
ists” see Russia as an anti-Western state,109 and favor Russia’s expan-
sion into China, the Muslim world, and Europe:110 “Their foreign
policy discourse exploits highly mythologized narratives of Russian
civilisational uniqueness and ‘mission.’” In the immediate aftermath
of the Cold War, this group was associated with extremists such as
Zhirinovsky and some extreme-left communist factions. This group
commanded 43 percent of the votes in the 1993 elections but has not
been able to match that showing since then. However, in the last two
decades, Russia has at times given signals which worry observers that
the weight of the opinions of this group in foreign policy circles might
be increasing.
Before getting into an account of Russian political developments
post-Cold War, it should be noted that these three camps are best

103
Tsygankov, “From International Institutionalism,” 258.
104
Ibid., 254.
105
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 13. See also Kassianova, “Russia: Still
Open to the West?” 825.
106
Tsygankov, “From International Institutionalism,” 259.
107
Ibid., 225–6.
108
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 13.
109
Tsygankov, “From International Institutionalism,” 256.
110
Ibid., 263. See also Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 825.
After the Soviet Union 223

seen as the current manifestation of a trend that is as old as Russia’s

involvement in systemic politics. As Neumann has convincingly
argued,111 debates in Russia about which direction the country should
take have always been between three positions: those who argue that
Russia naturally belongs with Europe and the West (Westernizers of
the old days112); those who argue that Russia is a Eurasian country
with a unique history, and should therefore pursue its policies accord-
ingly (Eurasianists); and fi nally, those who argue that Russia deserves
to be a non-Western superpower/empire/hegemon (Slavophiles). We
have also seen that these camps have their counterparts in Turkey and
Japan. This repeated pattern of division within domestic debates is a
direct consequence of the special social space these countries share
within the international system and the relational ontological inse-
curity they suffer as a result.
In fact, these camps correspond rather well to the stigma-response
strategies articulated in Chapter 2 . There are those who favor “cor-
rection” in hopes of joining the “normal” civilization, and there are
those who favor rejecting standards of “normal” society altogether.
In the middle are those who want to exploit the stigma, either as
a way of gaining influence among the community of the even more
stigmatized, or as a characteristic which demands special accommo-
dation. It is not a surprise that we fi nd the same debate repeated over
and over again not only in all three countries under investigation, but
also across time, and it is especially vibrant in periods which call state
identity into question.
In Russia, this time, the debates about identity have lasted longer
than they did in Turkey and Japan after their respective defeats. Part
of the difference may be that we do not have the benefit of hindsight
in this case. In fact, if we bring the analysis up to the present day, it
may be plausibly (but not defi nitively) argued that Russia has fi nally
settled on a steady course (though how that course will be affected by
the current global economic crisis remains to be seen). Nevertheless,
if there is anything resembling a consensus about the direction of
Russia, it is the fact that “the link between the clichéd ‘identity cri-
sis’ that Russia has been struggling through ever since post-Soviet

111
Neumann, Russia as Europe’s Other; “Self and Other ”; Russia and the
Idea of Europe.
112
See the discussion on pp. 208–210 about the nineteenth century.
224 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

emancipation and its foreign policy – commonly represented as

contradictory, incoherent and lacking strategic vision throughout
most of the period – was established early.”113 Russians, just like the
Turks and the Japanese, historically have used foreign policy as the
principal mechanism of self-identification114 – as long as debate rages
about foreign policy direction, it rages about identity, and vice versa.
And while many outside observers are quick to declare Russian inten-
tions to be one thing or the other, the diversity of opinions regarding
what Russia is up to these days is itself evidence of the fact that the
question is far from settled.
There are several reasons for the differences in the way the Russian
debate is playing out compared to the other cases. First, the way
Russia fought its war for recognition was different, and therefore its
resolution was different. In other words, the Cold War was not like
World War I or World War II – it was a cold war after all, fought
to a greater extent in the realm of symbolic gestures and arms races
than on the battlefield. Therefore, defeat did not occur on the battle-
field. As argued above, the fact of defeat or the unavoidability of
it probably became apparent to the Soviet leadership some time in
the 1980s. This had two related consequences: the unraveling of the
empire was decoupled from the military defeat and no rival occupied
either Russia or its previous spheres of influence. The former factor
inevitably lengthened the period of uncertainty about Russia’s new
identity (as cataclysmic events shaking state identity came in not one
but two waves), while the latter gave a degree of breathing room to
the rejectionist camp in Russia, the like of which the Japanese or the
Turkish reactionary groups never had.
The argument here is that it was much more difficult to plausibly
make the “let’s turn to Asia” argument in after-defeat Turkey or Japan
(although there were groups in both countries which did make the
argument right after defeat) – both had not only lost most of their
imperial possessions but also lost most of them to the influence of their
former rivals due to the intervention of the League of Nations and
the United Nations, respectively. Russia did lose considerable terri-
tory, but not to the same extent. And many states which did gain their

113
Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 821. Also see Kerr, “New
Eurasianism.”
114
Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 821.
After the Soviet Union 225

independence from Russia were easily brought back under Russian

influence,115 either because they were led by people whose background
made them amenable to taking orders from Russia or because they had
no other realistic alternatives (or both). This brings me to the second
main difference: the international backdrop for the Russian debates is
rather different than it was for Turkey and Japan – I will deal with that
in more detail in the next chapter, but for now, suffice it to say that it
is not a context which makes committing to one side or the other par-
ticularly rewarding from a status perspective. When we look at how
the identity debate actually progressed in Russia, we can observe that
its earlier contours very much resembled those in Turkey and Japan,
but the response from the outside was different. Let me explain.
The pro-Western camp dominated Gorbachev’s last years and the
fi rst years of Yeltsin’s government (up until the mid-1990s). These
groups pursued policies with the explicit intent of integrating with the
West.116 Indeed, the “new thinking” of the Gorbachev years was for-
mulated with the intent of accomplishing Russia’s entry to the West,
but as Larson and Shevchenko argue, the rhetoric of “new thinking”
was such that Russia was being presented to the world as a leader in
collective security matters.117 This thinking was based in a philosophy
of humanistic universalism, and by following it Russia was supposed
to assume a new role in tampering with the excesses of the capitalist
order while simultaneously joining it.118 Under the influence of “new
thinking” politicians and advisers, Russia made many “unilateral
concessions on matters such as UN sanctions on Yugoslavia, Iraq and
Libya; the levels and limitations of weapons permitted under START
II; controls on missile technology exports to India and arms sales to
Iran; the Western position on the rights of Russian minorities in the
Baltic; and the dispute with Japan over the South Kurile islands.”119
The Foreign Policy Concept of 1993 was very much a product of
this particular vision, even though it only made one reference to “the
innovative contribution of Gorbachev’s ‘New Political Thinking’.”120
The Concept emphasized the “democratic nature of the new Russian

115
Lynch, “Realism of Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 8.
116
See Larson and Shevchenko, “Shortcut to Greatness.”
117 118
Ibid., 87. Ibid., 86.
119
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 23; see also Forsberg, “Power,
Interests.”
120
Kassianova, “Russia: Still Open to the West?” 829.
226 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

statehood.” The document described the West as “one of the most

important centres of the world economy and international relations
[and] the global civilisational process.” “World’s leading democracies,”
“leading industrially developed states,” and “leading economically and
democratically developed states” were referenced. The Concept stated
that “achieving the main civil and economic characteristics associated
with the constitutive qualities and values of ‘the West’” was among the
top priorities of Russia.121 While the Concept also discussed possible
points of disagreement between Russia and the West, “the overriding
importance of shared democratic values and fundamental interests”122
was repeatedly emphasized. The Concept also declared “the end of the
East–West confrontation” and hopefully described a future of collabo-
ration with NATO and support by Western powers. We can note here
that the Russian view of the world at this early point after the collapse
of the Soviet Union was very much in line with the views expressed by
Turkish and Japanese leaders at the corresponding point in the time-
lines after their respective defeats.
Such Russian overtures were greeted with skeptical relief by the
West:123 “The Western powers were ready to stop considering Russia
as a foe, but politely declined the enthusiastic appeals from Yeltsin
and Kozyrev to instantly become allies.”124 This created a backlash
within Russian politics, and strengthened the hand of moderate con-
servatives as well as the nationalists who accused the pro-Western
camp of humiliating the country by a conciliatory stance that achieved
nothing.
Yeltsin himself wavered between the two camps. He argued that it was
time for Russia to join “the civilized world” by adopting principles of
the “market economy,” but also made remarks that he wished to expand
Russia at the expense of the former Soviet Republics.125 Faced with for-
eign criticism, he had to back-track. Nevertheless, electoral and polit-
ical pressures after 1993 forced Yeltsin126 to adopt an awkward middle

121
The Foreign Policy Concept of 1993 as quoted in Kassianova, “Russia: Still
Open to the West?” 829.
122
Ibid., 830.
123
Owen, “Transnational Liberalism,” 135.
124
Arbatov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 23; see also Kissinger, “New Russian
Question,” 12.
125
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 520.
126
Motyl, “Why Empires Reemerge.”
After the Soviet Union 227

ground of pro-Western foreign policy abroad, on the one hand, and

increasingly authoritarian “Russia first” rhetoric at home, on the other.
Malcolm and Pravda term this policy “Pragmatic Nationalism.”127
This shift was very much manifested in the 1997 National Security
Concept, which had a remarkably different tone and outlook than the
1993 Foreign Policy Concept. References to democracy and the West
were dropped with the exception of a single instance of a “warn-
ing against the danger of Russia’s ‘technological dependence on the
leading states of the West’ and a mention of discriminatory measures
against the Russian goods in the ‘developed countries of the West.’”128
Whereas the 1993 Foreign Policy Concept stated that “achieving the
main civil and economic characteristics associated with the constitu-
tive qualities and values of ‘the West’” was among the top priorities of
Russia,129 the 1997 National Security Concept took “care to maintain
equal distancing in relation to the ‘global, European and Asian eco-
nomic and political actors.”130 Kassianova notes that the document
was marked by “a strained kind of optimism, at least partly relying
on the sense of nuclear potential rather than confidence in the benign
character of the external environment.”131
Even though Yeltsin, as a masterful politician,132 maintained his
tenuous position at the helm well until the end of the decade, by
increasingly adding a nationalist veneer to his government – as in the
replacement of Kozyrev with Primakov in 1996133 – he could not do
much to ensure the success of his economic liberalization policies.134
His popularity waned as the Russian economy deteriorated. The eco-
nomic crisis of 1998 effectively ended the Yeltsin era135 and in 1999,

127
Malcolm and Pravda, “Democratization and Russian Foreign Policy,” 541.
128
The National Security Concept of 1997 as quoted in Kassianova,
“Russia: Still Open to the West?” 831.
129
The Foreign Policy Concept of 1993 as quoted in Kassianova, “Russia: Still
Open to the West?” 829.
130
The National Security Concept of 1997 as quoted in Kassianova,
“Russia: Still Open to the West?” 832.
131
Ibid.
132
See Service, History of Modern Russia, pp. 509–41.
133
Freedman, “Russia and Israel,” 140.
134
For a discussion of possible reasons why Yeltsin’s economic reforms fell
short, see e.g. Handelman, Comrade Criminal; Roberts and Sherlock,
“Bringing the Russian State Back in”; Blasi et al., Kremlin Capitalism;
Sergeev, Wild East; McFaul, Russia’s 1996 Presidential Election.
135
Roberts and Sherlock, “Bringing the Russian State Back in,” 477.
228 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

Yeltsin appointed Putin, a politically unknown figure with a KGB

background, as his prime minister and, ultimately, successor. Putin
quickly gained popularity during his time as prime minister, helped
especially by Russian actions in Chechnya. Within a year, Putin’s
popularity rating had soared from 2 percent to 50 percent.136
During the time he was in power, Yeltsin referred back to themes
from the “new thinking” years, arguing that Russia was still a great
power, but with the added character of benevolence: “Russia’s
authority is acknowledged by the world … [b]ut, for the fi rst time
in 80 years, this acknowledgement is based not on fear, as it was
under Stalin, Brezhnev, and others. Not on the dread of being
buried under the splinters of empire.”137 His policies were closely
associated with US recommendations. Nevertheless, some obser-
vers in the United States remained unconvinced of Russia’s com-
mitment to a Western alliance. For instance, a 1998 editorial from
the Washington Times remarks that the “direction of Russian for-
eign policy … is reminiscent of past Soviet foreign policy … its
function is … to support anti-American regimes everywhere.”138
The main disagreement between the United States and Russia dur-
ing the Clinton–Yeltsin years was the Balkan disputes over Bosnia
and Kosovo. Toward the end of the Yeltsin era, however, there was
growing frustration and disappointment over Russia’s failed econ-
omy, its constant need for assistance, and desperate clinging to the
title of “great power.”
Editorials in the Western press made light of Russia’s pretensions
of mediation in the Balkan disputes and its need to be treated as an
equal at the same time as it had its hand out for Western aid: “There
is one sense – and only one – in which Russia is a Great Power. It still
has a large (though aging) nuclear arsenal. But that’s it … Moscow
gets away with stuff … precisely because the West lets it”;139 “‘They
so desperately want to be treated as equals. But it’s hard to take
them seriously when they stamp their feet petulantly and then give
in,’ says one military source.”140 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Yeltsin’s

136
White and McAllister, “Putin and His Supporters,” 383.
137
From Yeltsin’s 1997 Independence Day Speech, News Service Reports (June
23, 1997).
138
Perlmutter, “Who Lost Russia … Our New Rival?” A17.
139
Newsweek (June 21, 1999).
140
Christian Science Monitor (June 21, 1999).
After the Soviet Union 229

last year in office was marked by an increasingly belligerent rhet-

oric.141 He made menacing remarks about Russia’s ability to use its
nuclear weapons, and denounced American culture and values on a
trip to China.142
Nevertheless, the Yeltsin years are marked by an important sym-
bolic – and mostly inadvertent – accomplishment. In 1994, during the
early years of Yeltsin’s rule, Russia was invited to attend G-7 meetings
and in 1997, Russia was invited to formally join the organization. It is
noteworthy that these goodwill gestures from the West followed two
moments of crisis in Yeltsin’s rule, during the 1993 and 1996 elec-
tions. Yeltsin responded to both by taking another step toward the
nationalist direction, which the West rewarded, interestingly enough,
by bringing Russia closer to the inner capitalist club: “The idea was
to prop up the flailing Boris N. Yeltsin by making Russia look like a
member of the club, even though it didn’t qualify based on income
or economic growth,” remarks an editorial in the Baltimore Sun.143
Russia, however, did not really take advantage of this membership
until Putin’s presidency.
The fi rst decade of the Russian Federation ended as clouded in
uncertainty as it was when it began. Allen Lynch notes in 2001 that:

since 1993, in response to the frustration of early Russian aspirations to

join the Western (i.e. G-7) economic, political and security communities,
Russian diplomacy has moved in a decidedly unilateralist and frequently
anti-Western (often anti-US) direction, reflecting the priority of establish-
ing Russia as the integrating power in central Eurasia as opposed to inte-
grating Russia within the broader G-7 world.144

He also notes, however, that Russia managed to avoid causing a rup-

ture with the G-7.145 Lynch reads the new direction of Russian foreign
141
Despite these developments, Michael McFaul remained optimistic about
Russia’s chances for democratization: “Most Russians now believe that
their country must develop a market economy and adhere to the principles
of market economy … most Russians, although disappointed with Western
policies toward Russia, still believe that integration with the West is in
Russia’s national interest … If a rollback were going to happen, it would
have followed Russia’s fi nancial meltdown in August 1998.” McFaul,
“Getting Russia Right,” 59–60.
142 143
New York Times (December 11, 1999). July 14, 2006.
144
Lynch, “Realism of Russia’s Foreign Policy,” 7–8.
145
Ibid., 8.
230 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

policy as a realist turn:146 “It fell fi rst to Kozyrev and then to Primakov
to make the adaptations required to reconcile post-Soviet Russia to a
subordinate position in the international system in a domestic set-
ting wherein most Russian elites persisted in assuming Russia’s great
power status.”147 If we take realist to be synonymous with “realistic”
that explanation could indeed be classified as realist. However, it is
much more plausible to read it as the result of a frustrated corrective
strategy – Russia wanted to be included among the “established” and
was willing to engage in the necessary stigma corrections by adapting
a market economy and democratic institutions, but found the Western
community aloof to its overtures.
Even after he became the Russian president, Putin’s intentions remai-
ned rather opaque to Western observers. Some observers in the West and
the former Soviet Republics were skeptical from the start: on June 15,
2000, the Lithuanian deputy speaker described Putin’s foreign policy
as Stalinist;148 a Canadian commentator observed that the West should
brace itself for the worst as Putin was sure to default on Russia’s $160
billion foreign debt.149 Others did not know what to make of Putin.150
Yet others were positively “giddy” about what Putin’s presidency meant
for Russian capitalism.151 If observers had reached a consensus on any
one thing, it was that Putin believed in a strong, paternalist Russian
state, and did not reject the legacy of the Soviet period.152 What they
could not agree on was whether this was a good or a bad thing.
Since taking over from Yeltsin, Putin has argued that Russia
can take “its rightful place in the world” by restoring its economic
strength.153 In one of his fi rst public speeches, Putin called for a return
of Russia’s strong state tradition and argued that Russia has to look
out for its own national interests: “Several years ago, we fell prey to
an illusion that we have no enemies. We have paid dearly for this.”154
After he was sworn in, he emphasized his desire for Russia to become
“a rich, strong and civilized country of which its citizens are proud
and which is respected in the world.”155
146 147
Ibid., 23. Ibid., 23–4.
148
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union (June 15, 2000).
149
National Post (June 17, 2000).
150
Washington Times (May 7, 2000); The Wall Street Journal (July 11, 2000).
151
Friedman, “Keep Rootin’ for Putin,” The New York Times (December
27, 2001).
152 153
Nicholson, “Putin’s Russia,” 870. Ibid., 871.
154
Putin, as reported in Washington Times (January 31, 2003).
155
Putin, as reported in the Washington Post (May 8, 2000).
After the Soviet Union 231

Putin soon unveiled a new foreign policy blueprint that attached

great importance to the Group of Eight (G-8) and called for closer
cooperation with the European Union.156 In the Foreign Policy Concept
of 2000, the category of the referents for defining Russia’s interests
and objectives were broadened to “include the ‘world community’ and
‘world economy,’ ‘market economy methods’ and ‘values of democratic
society,’ ‘international economic organisations,’ and the familiar but
very rarely mentioned ‘leading states of the world’ along with a single
reference to ‘influential developing states,’ all complete with thoroughly
depersonalized ‘foreign states and interstate associations.’”157 While
calling for cooperation and partnership, the document also expressed
growing concern about Russia’s inability to influence the structural-
economic and legal conditions of the international system.158
Putin made good on his word by insisting on equal-partner treat-
ment in the Japan 2000 summit of the G-8.159 He made a strong and
determined showing at the summit, surprising the other leaders in the
group who were accustomed to dealing with Yeltsin, whose “clownish
antics … [had] only cemented their perception that Russia – notwith-
standing its nuclear arsenal – lacked a government that could be taken
seriously.”160 Putin came to the summit bearing news from his visit to
North Korea and impressed the leaders by not asking for debt relief.
He continued his impressive showing in foreign policy by engaging
in a whirlwind tour of world capitals in the fi rst year of his tenure,
as well as issuing declarations about every possible strategic relation-
ship of Russia.161 Of course, Putin was very much helped by Russia’s

156
Washington Post (July 11, 2000); South China Morning Post (July 12,
2000).
157
The Foreign Policy Concept of 2000 as quoted in Kassianova, “Russia: Still
Open to the West?” 832.
158
Ibid., 833. 159 Reuters News Service (July 13, 2000).
160
Washington Post (July 24, 2000).
161
See e.g. the following headlines: “Putin’s Indian Visit,” ITAR-TASS News
Wire (October 1, 2000); “Putin’s Role in Foreign Policy Expands with Serb
Crisis,” Washington Times (October 4, 2000); “Putin Says Long-Term
Relations with Iran Important,” BBC Monitoring Middle East (October 17,
2000); “Asian Countries Still Top Putin’s Agenda,” China Daily (November
10, 2000); “Putin Stresses Cooperation with Asia Pacific,” Xinhua News
Agency (November 9, 2000); “Russia Angles for Bigger Role in Mideast,
Israel’s Foreign Minister Will Visit Moscow,” Christian Science Monitor
(November 29, 2000); “Putin Says He Will Visit Egypt in 2001,” ITAR-
TASS News Wire (December 25, 2000).
232 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

economic recovery, which freed his hands to pursue international

contacts.162
Putin also capitalized quickly on the events of September 11 by
supporting American action in Central Asia in return for Western
indulgence for Russia’s military campaign in Chechnya.163 This was
interpreted as a dramatic pro-Western shift in Putin’s foreign policy,
both at home and abroad. Nationalists, especially those within the
ranks of the military, initially criticized Putin for these concessions and
others, such as the closure of Russia’s spy station in Cuba.164 It was not
immediately evident what Russia received in exchange for its uncondi-
tional support for US anti-terrorism efforts.165 At this time, Putin also
faced some criticism from Parliament for pursuing a too friendly for-
eign policy toward the West.166 Nevertheless, Putin’s domestic approval
ratings stayed strong, and the strategy played out well by getting some
semblance of international legitimacy for Russia’s actions in Chechnya.
A 2004 article by John O’Loughlin et al. gives us an interesting take
on this episode: “President Putin sought to represent the event as a
‘global Chechnya’ … 9–11 provided the occasion for the development
of an innovative geopolitical script that asserted the identity oppos-
ition ‘civilised/barbarian’ as a fundamental axis in world politics, (re-)
located Russia within the West as a ‘civilised power’ and gave Russian
geoeconomic interests priority over traditional geopolitics.”167 The
authors also found that while the Russian public continued to harbor
suspicions about US intentions in Central Asia, the above-mentioned
shift engineered by Putin had significant support across all groups in
Russia.168 They further note that:

On one hand, most Russian citizens admire the economic, technological

and social achievements of Western countries and are persuaded that
Russia must and can reduce her laggard status and reach the same level of
economic development as the West. On the other hand, they realize how

162
White and McAllister, “Putin and His Supporters,” 384.
163
Service, History of Modern Russia, p. 544.
164
The Hindu (November 18, 2001); BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
(November 17, 2001).
165
Nezavisimaya Gazete editorial, as reported in BBC Monitoring Former
Soviet Union (March 11, 2002); Financial Times (April 15, 2002).
166
Financial Times (April 15, 2002).
167
O’Loughlin et al., “‘Risky Westward Turn’?” 4.
168
Ibid.
After the Soviet Union 233

deep the gap remains and how difficult it is to catch up with “the West.”
… Indeed, 71% of respondents to the VTsIOM (All-Russian Centre for
Research on Public Opinion) survey held in November 2001 agreed with
the statement that Russia belonged to a “Eurasian” civilization and, there-
fore, the Western model did not suit her, and only 13% accepted that their
country was part of European and Western civilization. These ratios are a
kind of compensatory reaction based on understanding that the gap separ-
ating Russian and Western standards of living remains important.169

If we did not factor in Russia’s preoccupation with avoiding outsider

status, these fi ndings would present a paradox: while the majority of
the Russian public in 2001 did not see themselves as part of Western
civilization and no longer thought that emulating Western models
was a desirable strategy, on average they supported Putin’s efforts to
utilize 9/11 to recast Russia as one of the “good guys” within the fold
of Western civilization. While some of this probably had something
to do with Putin’s ability to secure support for (or at least indifference
to) the Russian campaign in Chechnya as a result, such an outcome
is also very much in line with the argument in this book. Regardless
of what else Russia has done since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
the West remains the main referent it defi nes its identity against – and
any conceptual construction which defi nes Russia as a member of
the “established” club is bound to be satisfying to a Russian public
still shaped by an imperial-past national habitus. That Putin was able
to achieve this redefi nition (however briefly) without actually having
to commit to any “corrective” domestic strategies made this strategy
even more appealing – the choice presented no dilemmas of inauthen-
ticity in the short run.
In 2002, Putin emphasized his desire for Russia to join the World
Trade Organization, and become a rule-making member of the inter-
national economic community.170 He also made frequent references
to Russia’s “stronger democracy” and “freer economy.”171 However,
if Putin seemed to be inching closer to the West abroad, at home
he was doing the opposite: rolling back the political, military, and

169
Ibid., 5–6.
170
Putin’s State-of-the-Nation Address, as reported in BBC Monitoring Former
Soviet Union (April 18, 2002).
171
RIA News Agency, Moscow (June 12, 2002).
234 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

legal reforms of Yeltsin and ruling in an increasingly authoritarian

manner.172
Putin resisted joining the US campaign in Iraq and in 2003, he put
more distance between Russia and the United States: “the other real-
ity underlying Mr. Putin’s doctrine is that for all its military, economic
and political might, the U.S. cannot, and should not, be allowed to
run the world as a ‘my-way-or-the-highway’ cowboy.”173 He started
promoting the notion of an “arc of stability” stretching from Europe
through the Caucasus and Central Asia to China and Southeast Asia,
and concluded military alliances with the former Soviet Republics of
Central Asia and the Caucasus.174
Following these developments, the United States rediscovered its
skepticism about Russia’s reliability as a partner toward the end of
2003. President Bush openly criticized Putin for curtailing basic
democratic freedoms, in stark contrast to his earlier statements to
the contrary.175 Tensions escalated in 2004, and came to a head over
developments in Ukraine.176 However, economically, Russia bene-
fited from the instability of the world energy markets: “Surging
demand from China and India, the costliest natural disaster in
U.S. history, a global war on terrorism centered on the Middle East
and Central Asia and other events … rocked energy markets” and
spurred Russia into the position of a global energy superpower. As
a result, in the 2006 summit of the G-8 nations, Putin put great
emphasis on the country’s oil and gas exports as a rationale for its
inclusion in the club.177 Western observers grew increasingly con-
cerned: “As Russia’s renaissance has progressed, so it has moved
away from the European democratic model that its former east-
ern European satellites have largely embraced.”178 Worries about
Russia’s authoritarian turn deepened when in 2008 Putin hand-
picked his successor for the presidency and took for himself the

172
Los Angeles Times (September 21, 2003).
173
The Hindu (July 26, 2003).
174
Ibid.
175
Washington Post (December 14, 2003).
176
BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union (December 12, 2004).
177
International Herald Tribune (February 11, 2006).
178
Financial Times (April 21, 2006).
Whither Russia? 235

position of prime minister.179 Observers have noted, especially dur-

ing the development of the Russian–Georgian War of 2008, that
Putin very much remains the de facto leader of Russia. Whether he
will continue to fare as well during the present economic crisis as
he has in the last decade remains to be seen.
To sum up, Russia’s post-Cold War policy has been shaped by two
men – Yeltsin and Putin – neither of whose motivations have been
particularly transparent to outside observers. If Yeltsin was difficult
to read and predict because he was hotheaded and impulsive, Putin is
more so because he is calm, collected, and discreet. However, leaving
personalities aside, it is possible to interpret Russia’s post-defeat strat-
egies as amorphous and enigmatic precisely because the international
adjustment required of it as a former non-Western “great power” is
extremely difficult to chart, even compared to the previous cases of
Turkey and Japan.

Whither Russia?
And yet, Russia stands out for its 500 year history of always just having
being tamed, civilized, just having begun to participate in European pol-
itics, just having become part of Europe … Danger resides on the borders,
Mary Douglas argues, and so, as long as Russia is constructed as a bor-
der case, it will also be inscribed with danger. (Iver Neumann, Russia as
Europe’s Other, p. 46)

In analyzing Russia’s post-defeat choices within the status-seeking

framework offered in Chapters 1 and 2 , we can start by noting that
Russia’s response to systemic challenges during the Gorbachev years
approximated the corrective strategy of the arriviste. Russia started
with the assumption that after implementing certain reforms it could
be smoothly integrated into Europe/the West. This supposition came
to influence the New Thinkers of the Gorbachev years (who had been
favoring a more mixed strategy earlier on, trying to capitalize on the
Soviet Union’s access to the developing world) and very much char-
acterized the worldview of the International Institutionalists who

179
Technically, he was nominated by the newly elected President Medvedev, but
the outcome was entirely predictable and entirely engineered by Putin.
236 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

dominated the fi rst Yeltsin administration. This was also the belief
that was very hopefully articulated in the Foreign Policy Concept of
1993. We see here a slightly stronger belief in an affi nity with the
Western club than we have observed in other cases – the difference
is that while Atatürk and Yoshida went to great lengths to make the
case for the presence of such an affi nity, Gorbachev and his cadre
assumed it.
Four factors account for the optimism of the Russian elite at this
juncture: fi rst, there was a historically recurring theme in Russian
identity narratives that defi ned Russia as truly belonging in Europe,
geographically and culturally; second, Russia was part of the Concert
of Europe, which made it possible for historical revisionists to view the
“Easternness” of the Soviet Union as an aberration; third, of the three
cases, the Soviet Union had come closest to achieving great power
parity with the West, and therefore was ontologically more secure;
and fourth, the aforementioned chronological gap between military
defeat and imperial collapse initially allowed Russian national habitus
to shield itself to some degree from the kind of trauma both Turkey
and Japan had experienced.
However, despite the presence of these factors, (some) Russian lead-
ers were also aware that the West might not recognize Russia’s natural
place in Europe and therefore attempted to present the country’s new
openness as an added value to Western civilization; with its experi-
ence in standing up for the “oppressed” peoples of the East, it was
supposed to temper the excesses of the capitalist core through its own
inclusion. This strategy was popular during the early years of New
Thinking, and it gained popularity again as the initial optimism of
quickly joining the West faded and the moderate liberals started gain-
ing influence. As noted above, this group still favored close relations
with the West but emphasized Russia’s unique geopolitical position.
Therefore, we can conclude that before 1996, or even 1993, Russia
displayed a strategy very much similar to that observed in the previ-
ous cases.
The variation after 1996 – in other words, the ascendancy of the
views of the Eurasianists, if not the nationalists – can be explained by
the changes that had occurred in the international system compared
to the 1950s or the 1920s. Straightforward, conciliatory emulation of
dominant Western and European norms of democracy and economic
Whither Russia? 237

liberalization of the early 1990s was not working as a foreign policy

strategy because in the international system of the 1990s, following
this path would not have accrued Russia any real status gains. We
see the disappointment Russian leaders had with the “exclusionary”
policies of the West clearly expressed in the Foreign Policy Concept
of 1997. In the 1920s, Turkey could adopt norms of modernization,
secularization, and Westernization, and hope to be admitted to the
privileged club of “civilized countries” who were the only fully sov-
ereign states of the system. In the 1950s, Japan could follow a devel-
opmentalist trajectory by adopting a capitalist template and hope to
raise its rank in the GNP-conscious sphere of the First World. Russia,
however, could achieve very little status gain by blindly following the
democratization requirements of Europe and the West. The presence
of the European Union and its size concerns essentially meant that
Russia could never again be an integral part of Europe. If Russia were
going to restore its status, it would have to do it without membership
recognition from Europe.
Ironically, the one move the West made in order to assuage Russia’s
concerns about its status in the new international system also under-
mined Russian “Westernization” efforts at home. Also considering
the fact that Russia cannot join the European Union, both the social
disincentives and incentives for Russia have been minimized to a
small enough degree to enable Putin and his cadre to conclude that
Russia can afford to pick and choose from the socialization menu,
and still maintain domestic support. As discussed in Chapter 2 , these
are the very conditions that fuel rejection strategies – the lower/nomi-
nal members of established groups are exactly in the kind of posi-
tion to attempt status enhancement by leading a charge of outsiders.
Resources that would have been used to break the barrier into the
inner circle are now freed up to use to influence others.
To put it another way, the very factors which would lead one to
intuitively conclude that Russia, among the three cases under dis-
cussion, would be the most amenable to a smooth integration with
the West are actually the reasons why Russia’s path has veered more
Eastward than the previous cases. Russia can therefore be thought of
as being either the most blessed or the most cursed of the three cases
discussed, depending on one’s perspective. Its relative cultural prox-
imity to the West and its natural material strength have decreased
238 The “enigmatic” enemy: Russia (1990–2007)

social constraints on Russia and given breathing room to the more

hawkish/hostile elements in Russian society, as compared to both
Turkey and Japan after defeat.
For these reasons, the adoption of liberalizing political reforms
was doomed. This trajectory was further helped by the United States’
increasing emphasis on “security” after 9/11. The shifting normative
criteria gave Putin an opening. The “arc of stability” project, if it
worked, could allow Russia to secure recognition from both the Third
World and possibly even Europe, but most especially from the Muslim
world, as a stable and rational alternative to the “bullying” tendencies
of the United States. It should be noted, however, doomsday scenarios
of a second Cold War notwithstanding, that the post-defeat strategy
Russia seems to have settled on is dissimilar to the anti-systemic, hos-
tile development path followed by the Bolsheviks. While the Russia
of today is leaning toward what seems once again like the rejection of
the ideal norms of the international society, it is not in the position it
was in the early twentieth century. For instance, while Russia is not
a democracy, it has not altogether rejected the democratic govern-
ance180 discourse emanating from the West: Putin’s (and by extension,
Medvedev’s) Russia is a “semi-authoritarian regime in democratic
clothing. That is to say Russia pretends to be democratic”181 and it
is “at once, a regime that offers its citizens consumer rights but not
political freedoms, state sovereignty but not individual autonomy, a
market economy but not genuine democracy.”182 In other words, for
all its protestations of hostility and even at the peak of its post-defeat
economic prowess, Russia has not been able to reject the norms of the
international order this time around.
There are several reasons why Russia has ended up in this juncture.
Russia’s ability to pursue its superficially hostile middle-ground strat-
egy has been entirely contingent on its fortunes in the rather fickle
energy market, and economically Russia has no choice but to play by
the rules of the world market. Finally, the Russian regime cannot mus-
ter a normative alternative to the dominant systemic one of Western
capitalist triumph. Hence, there is no ressentiment strategy on display

180
See Chapter 2 .
181
Shevtsova, “Vladimir Putin,” 34.
182
Krastev, “What Russia Wants,” 48.
Whither Russia? 239

here. The only real niche Russia can carve is as an alternative enforcer
of system norms in a context where many countries cannot or do not
want to match the expectations of the United States. All that Russia
is doing is to take normative criteria of the West and reinterpret them
for Eastern consumption. It is not preposterous, therefore, to conclude
that Russia has also become an enforcer of systemic values, however
enigmatic, dangerous, or unfriendly it might appear.
6 Conclusion: Zealots or Herodians?

During the last few centuries, our Western society has been intruding
upon the other civilizations of the world with greater insistence. First it
has drawn them all into the meshes of its economic system; next it has
enlarged the borders of its political ascendency almost as far as the borders
of its trade; and latterly it has been invading the life of its neighbours on
the most intimate plane – the plane of social institutions and of spiritual
emotions and ideas. This revolutionary process of Westernization, which
at this moment is overtaking the Turks and many of their co-religionists
in other Islamic countries, has already proceeded further among the
Oriental Christian ex-subjects of the Turks in South-Eastern Europe and
among their Oriental Christian ex-enemies in Russia, and it is actively at
work among the Hindus and the Far Easterners. Thus, in studying the
Westernization process in Turkey, we are increasing our understanding of
the human world in which we ourselves live and move and have our being;
for the issues with which the Turks have been confronted by their contact
with the West are confronting other non-Western peoples the world over.
Everywhere these peoples stand at the parting of the ways, with the choice
of entering the camp of the Zealots or the camp of the Herodians. They
can no longer remain neutral; for the West, in its restless activity, will not
let them alone. Shall they accept the civilization of the West and attempt
to adjust their own lives to it, or shall they reject it and attempt to cast it
out as a devil which is seeking to possess their souls?
Arnold Toynbee, Turkey

The title of this chapter comes from the above passage which con-
cludes Toynbee’s excellent analysis of Turkey’s Westernization efforts
in the interwar period. Great observer that he was, Toynbee realized
that the changes Turkey was undergoing in the 1920s amounted to
neither an aberration nor a historical curiosity, but rather were part
of a great structural trend which sooner or later would engulf the
majority of peoples around the globe. Unfortunately, the import of

240
Conclusion 241

this observation was never really acknowledged by the one disci-

pline that should have been most concerned with such a structural
trend: International Relations. For the most part, IR has relegated to
the dustbin of history the choices the majority of the peoples in the
world faced in the presence of the inevitable Westernization of global
relations, and deems their dilemma as irrelevant to modern-day pol-
itics. Not only is this problematic from a social scientific perspective,
but it is also dangerous from a policy-making angle.
IR theorists have had the unfortunate habit of treating social dimen-
sions of international interactions as negligible. This is especially
problematic for analyzing the behavior of states outside the West,
whose identities have been shaped by the additional social burdens
they face in the modern international system. Most structural the-
ories in IR ignore the effects of social stratification on state behavior
and are therefore ill-equipped to explain the behavior of the majority
of states in the international system.
Indeed, a cursory survey of IR theories might lead one to the
conclusion that non-Western states are the decorative plants of
modern international society. The treatment non-Western countries
have received at the hands of IR scholars brings to mind Aristotle,
who thought that men were like animals – they acted, they were
doers – whereas women were like plants – they were acted upon,
they stood still. This general theoretical indifference to the non-
West is backed up by the belief that if any of these states attain
any agency, they will act just like their Western counterparts. The
overall thrust of the discipline has been to ignore the non-West in
theory formulation because non-Western states are either assumed
to be static and therefore indistinguishable from the environment,
or assumed to be easily covered by theories extrapolated from the
Western experience.
This state of affairs in the academic study of international rela-
tions mirrors the social stratification in actual dynamics, and is
predicted by the stigma theory offered in this book. The greatest priv-
ilege that accrues to “normals” in any stratified society is the ability,
the “smugness” to view their own condition as “natural,” “objec-
tive,” and as “matter-of-fact”: “His is the state of ‘being situated’ or
‘tuned’ (Heidegger), which can feed nothing but the relativ-naturliche
Weltanschauung (Max Scheler): that is a natural propensity to view
the conditions otherwise circumscribed, confi ned to this place here
242 Conclusion

and this time now, as ‘natural’ and thus beyond discussion.”1 This is a
position of great power because it makes the situations of the outsider,
the stranger, the stigmatized their own problem, even though “all the
essential determinants of the stranger’s plight lie beyond the reach
of everything the stranger himself may do.”2 Almost every strategy
to remedy this situation leads to reinforcing it: if the stigmatized/the
stranger/the outsider attempts to become “normal” through assimi-
lation, he confi rms the defi nition of himself as not “normal”; if he
argues with the “normal” view by pointing out that there are other
experiences which that normal view does not account for, he draws
attention to his “abnormality.”
In Toynbee’s words, the outsider’s choice is between becoming a
Zealot or a Herodian, but it is actually the fact that one is faced with
this choice, more than the actual choice itself, that reinforces the con-
dition of stature inferiority. To be “normal” is to not have to worry
constantly about which is the right choice to make, to not have to
think about the world in terms of this choice. To be “normal,” to be
“established,” is to have the luxury of seeing the world as natural, to
take it for granted, and to not have to worry about the “construction”
of one’s own identity, of society, or of international relations. Once
those ontological matters are relegated to the realm of “given” facts,
the illusion of fully realized agency, of sovereignty, of positive free-
dom in what is inevitably always an ambivalent world becomes much
easier to sustain. And for many, that illusion is enough.
The “normals” hold all the power – they do not, and in fact,
they would much rather not, have to listen to the outsider whose
efforts to belong and speak their language can be as equally strong
a reminder of the arbitrariness of their “objective” worldview as
her protestations about injustice. 3 To the degree that mainstream,
“normal,” “objective” social science theories take into account the
plight of the outsiders in the international system, this very pattern
is almost invariably reproduced. Recall the normative dichotomies
invoked in the fi rst chapters of this book: civilized/barbaric, mod-
ern/traditional, developed/underdeveloped (or the politer version,

1
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 75.
2
Ibid., p. 77.
3
“The very awareness of such an outside view makes the natives feel insecure
in their home ways and truths.” Ibid., p. 78.
Conclusion 243

“developing”), liberal/illiberal, democratic/authoritarian, etc. It is

always the label on the right side that is presented as a problem
that needs to be overcome. This casts the issue as a mechanistic
dilemma about attaining desirable attributes, as opposed to what
it really is: an existential one of delegitimation and stigmatization.
What gets obscured in the process is the fact that the left side of
the dichotomy cannot exist without the right side: “Despite the
appearance to the contrary, it is not the failure to acquire native
knowledge which constitutes the outsider as a stranger, but the
incongruent existential constitution if the stranger, as being neither
‘inside’ nor ‘outside’, neither ‘friend’ nor ‘enemy’, neither included
nor excluded, which makes the native knowledge unassimilable.”4
In other words, without an understanding of the deep structural
properties of established-outsider relationships in the international
system, any attempt to address the supposed endogenous “causes”
of outsiderness will actually have the opposite effect of entrenching
power disparities and affi rming the “objectivity” of the hegemonic
worldview.
This is precisely why this book attempts to offer a structural view
of international stratification and demonstrate how international
stigmatization circumscribes the behavior of non-Western actors.
I underline the social, the structural, the exogenous nature of stig-
matization, inferiority, laggardness, backwardness, barbarity not
as an excuse on behalf of the non-West or an accusation against
the West, but as a corrective against a literature that allows for
the agency of non-Western actors only when they fail to live up to
Western standards. In that perspective, what is wrong about the
non-West actor is its own fault, and what is right about it is the
West’s doing or an automatic response to Western stimuli. In this
book, through a juxtaposition of the choices Turkey, Japan, and
Russia have made in their interactions with the West, I have tried
to show that the reality is more the other way around: outcomes
taken to be functionally determined by Western observers are often
the result of long considered and contested deliberations by local
actors, and what are considered to be domestic failures (by both
local and international observers) were often much more contingent
on international social dynamics than is usually assumed.

4
Ibid., p. 76.
244 Conclusion

Let me now recap that discussion and say a few words about the
choices facing Turkey, Japan, and Russia today – because what is
happening with all three of these cases nowadays is pertinent to the
concluding point I want to make about how we can improve the inter-
national system.
Just as observers of the last two decades are baffled by the actions
of Russia, the behaviors of Turkey and Japan after defeat also gave
rise to many a misplaced prediction. However, while in the initial
decades after defeat the observers of Russia tended to err on the side
of optimism about Russia’s receptiveness to international norms and
alliance potential, assessments in the cases of Turkey and Japan often
displayed serious fears about future reversals. This in itself is very
telling.
The Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I, dismantled,
partially occupied. It took three years of military struggle, domestic
chaos, and some stubborn diplomatic maneuvering at the Lausanne
Conference for the new Kemalist regime to establish itself. The rein-
carnated Turkish state was much smaller than the Ottoman Empire
and had depleted most of its military and economic resources. Japan
lost its empire in World War II, and was in perhaps an even worse
material condition than Turkey at the end of the war due to the dev-
astation wrought by the atomic bombs. The country was occupied by
US forces and it was not until 1951 that Japan regained its full auton-
omy. Russia, on the other hand, was not defeated in open military
war, nor occupied, nor subject to any postwar treaty impositions.
In other words, the material conditions of Russia’s defeat were quite
unlike those in the other two cases.
The juxtaposition between how realism would read each of these
situations and the actual comparative treatment Turkey, Japan, and
Russia got after their respective defeats is jarring. Of these three coun-
tries it was Russia’s ultimate integration to the “civilized” world that
was hailed as a sure thing, bringing about declarations of the “End of
History.” By contrast, both Japan and Turkey, even though each had
very limited material room for maneuver, were eyed with consider-
able suspicion and skepticism, and continued to be so regarded long
after they had established a record of cooperation. The stigmatization
framework offered in this book predicts this disparity. Bauman’s dis-
cussion of what happens to the stranger who attempts to assimilate
is directly applicable to our understanding of these three cases: “The
Conclusion 245

loyalty which is simply taken for granted in the case of the natives
… calls for suspicious and vigilant scrutiny in the case of yesterday’s
stranger; and forever so, as his commitment has been compromised
from the start and beyond the hope of redemption by the original sin
of being freely chosen.”5 Of the three cases, Russia bears the most
“familial” resemblance to the original rule-makers of the international
society, and is the one that is most like the “natives” of the European/
Western order. This is partly because of the dominant religion of its
population and the ethno-racial make-up of the titular nation, and
partly because Russia had in fact managed to gain a formal seat in
the European society of states in the nineteenth century. Hence, many
observers in the 1990s jumped to the conclusion that the Soviet Union
was merely a deviation from Russia’s natural destiny as a country
that inherently approximates the original normative ideal of the states
system. While realists may claim that Russia’s ultimate aggressive
turn vindicates the materialist reading of the situation, the fact of the
matter is, as explained in Chapter 5, Russia’s hostile turn cannot be
thought of as independent from the (comparatively) forgiving social
treatment it got from the West for a brief while in the 1990s.
Russia’s historical and cultural proximity to the core as well as its
previous stature as a great power brought it identity assurances at a
time it was probably least qualified to receive them. Russia’s (incon-
sistent) turn to a more aggressive rhetoric in foreign policy does not
precede but actually follows Russia’s admission to the elite power club
of international relations. Russia’s admission to the G-8 at a time it
arguably had not met most of the criteria for membership, coupled
with the fact that the country had inherited the Soviet Union’s seat
on the UN Security Council, momentarily created an illusion of stat-
ure satisfying enough to the Russian domestic audience without solv-
ing Russia’s otherness problem, and counterintuitively weakened the
hand of the liberalizers. This development was not unlike the obstacle
Russian Westernizers faced in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century
when Russia’s participation in the Concert of Europe had allowed
Nicholas to keep reformers at bay.
I do not intend to downplay the challenges Russia has faced since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it is important to draw attention
to the fact that Russia was given the benefit of the doubt much longer

5
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 78.
246 Conclusion

post-defeat and rewarded much more easily than both Turkey and
Japan for doing far less than either to be conciliatory. What is more,
this dynamic is prominently at play again. These days, both Turkey
and Japan are struggling to chart a more autonomous foreign policy
course away from the influence of their traditional Western partners,
and despite decades of loyalty to the West, hardly a week goes by
without a proclamation from a Western observer that either country
has been or is about to be “lost.”
It is true that the last decade has been an uncharacteristically high-
profile one for Turkey’s foreign policy. Under the leadership of the
Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has taken fi rmer pos-
itions in its dealings with its Western allies, on the one hand, and has
displayed an increasing interest in cultivating ties with its Eastern and
Southern neighbors, on the other hand. For instance, after an initial
strong push for Turkey’s accession to the European Union, the AKP
government seems to have lost interest in pursuing this trajectory and,
despite the “Obama effect,” Turkey’s relations with the United States
remain cooler at present than historically has been the case.6 On the
flip side, Turkey is actively pursuing stronger economic ties with the
Muslim world and Africa, regions mostly ignored throughout the
last century.7 In other words, after almost a century of commitment
to a staunch Western alliance, Turkey may be modifying its course.8
Interestingly, Japan has also recently come under the control of a non-
establishment party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Like the
AKP, the DPJ seems uncomfortable with the foreign policy status quo
and has expressed a willingness to take Japan out of the American
orbit in favor of strengthened ties with neighbors in the Eastern hemi-
sphere. Yet neither what Turkey has done thus far nor what the DPJ
government has declared it plans to do comes even remotely close to
cutting ties with the West – so what exactly is the source of all the
hand-wringing by Western commentators?
Moreover, after decades of pursuing Western-friendly policies in
order to gain recognition, neither Turkey nor Japan has been able to
fi nd itself a secure place in the international order. The course charted

6
Grigoriadis, “Friends No More?”; Rachman, “America is Losing the Free
World.”
7
“Turkey: Trade Shifts away from Europe,” Oxford Analytica Brief Service,
February 2009, 1.
8
Bengio, “Altercating Interests”; Abramowitz and Barkey, “Turkey’s
Transformers.”
Conclusion 247

by both Turkey and Japan since their respective defeats has until
recently been to seek equal acceptance as “normal” states by their
Western counterparts. In order to achieve this outcome, they commit-
ted themselves to grand strategies that entailed aggressively adopt-
ing Western models at home on the one hand, and cooperating with
Western powers in foreign policy matters on the other. Both in their
own way can be thought of as having successfully pursued this strat-
egy to its logical end (Japan perhaps more so than Turkey) – the prob-
lem is, the arriviste strategy itself is fundamentally limited: “The best
he can be is a former stranger, ‘a friend on approval’ and permanently
on trial, a person vigilantly watched and constantly under pressure to
be someone else than he is, told to be ashamed of his guilt of not being
what he ought to be.”9 And this is precisely the position both Turkey
and Japan have found themselves in. Despite the great lengths they
have gone to in order to transform themselves, both countries remain
torn between the East and the West.
Given an understanding of international stigmatization, none of
this should come as a surprise. Bauman notes that the promise of
assimilation is a hollow one. Stigmatized strangers may

go out of their way to get rid of and to suppress everything which makes
them distinct from the rightful members of the native community – and hope
that a devoted emulation of native ways will render them indistinguishable
from the hosts, and by the same token guarantee their reclassification as
insiders, entitled to the treatment the friends routinely receive. The harder
they try, however, the faster the fi nishing-line seems to be receding.10

In fact, the effort put into socialization is the very thing that makes it
impossible for outsider states to achieve the kind of insider recogni-
tion they seek: “the very good will of the stranger turns against him;
his effort to assimilate sets him further apart, bringing his strangeness
into fuller than ever relief and supplying the proof of the threat it
contains.”11 This is why despite decades of loyalty and commitment
to Western norms, both Turkey and Japan have immediately become
suspect, notwithstanding the fact that in both cases the shifts in for-
eign policy thus far seem to be more rhetorical than actual.

9
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 72.
10 11
Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 78.
248 Conclusion

The ugly truth is that what is the best outcome for the West is not
necessarily the best for Turkey or Japan (or Russia). The best outcome
for the West is for Turkey and Japan to continue playing along, to
keep pursuing belonging, but never really getting the recognition they
crave. Sticking with that strategy would continue to affi rm the objec-
tivity, the superiority, the desirability of Western-ness. Essentially this
is why the goal-post, the bar one has to clear in order to belong,
keeps moving, keeps being rearticulated in established-outsider rela-
tionships.12 This pattern is most obvious in the relations between
Turkey and the European Union, but Japan’s and Russia’s relations
with the core of the international system are also subtly undermined
by the same dynamic: “The rules of the game are changed with little
warning. Or, rather, only now the earnestly ‘self-refi ning’ strangers
discover that what they mistook for a game of emancipation was in
fact the game of domination.”13 Given the fact that gaining belonging
through assimilation is a fool’s errand, it is actually rather rational
for Turkey and Japan (and Russia) to experiment with other coping
strategies.
The reader may wonder what has taken Turkey (or Japan) so long
to discover (assuming they have) that the recognition strategy they
were pursuing would never deliver the optimal outcome they were
seeking. Why does Charlie Brown keep trying to kick Lucy’s ball,
even though she yanks it away every time he tries? Lucy’s joke draws
on the two features of his identity Charlie Brown is most insecure
about: friendship and sportsmanship. The fact of the matter is, the
offer of recognition through assimilation is extremely seductive to
outsiders because it offers an end to what bothers them most: ambiva-
lence, ontological doubt, uncertainty.
The second (ugly) reason why countries like Turkey and Japan have
kept at this strategy for so long is because it offered them a degree
more recognition than those who were even worse off. As discussed in
Chapters 3 and 4, in addition to directly seeking recognition from the
West, both Turkey and Japan have pursued side strategies for status
enhancement revolving around attempts to position the countries in a

12
“The stranger had been promised that full ‘domestication’ would follow
cultural reform … The bluff of this promise is called the moment it has been
taken seriously and matched with a behaviour it ostensibly required. The real
obstacles guarding the entry are now revealed. They prove to be economic,
political and above all social …” Ibid., p. 80. See also Bourdieu, Distinction.
13
Bauman, p. 71.
Conclusion 249

mediator or bridging role between the East and the West. It is claimed
that Turkey and Japan are in unique positions to help their neighbors
because they are the first among their “kind” to reconcile the various
tensions between local culture and modern norms. Such a strategy is
often framed as progressive and beneficent, but it in fact reinforces the
status hierarchies in the international system, and ensures for Turkey
and Japan a more privileged position vis-à-vis their Asian neighbors.
In fact, despite the “bridging” rhetoric often employed by both coun-
tries, any regional role has been for the most part a by-product or an
afterthought to these countries’ quests to gain equal recognition from
the West.
Instead of making an effort to regain a more powerful status by
committing fully to regional causes (and becoming advocates for
regional complaints), both Turkey and Japan have attempted to frame
their Western orientation as the reason why they should matter in their
regions. Implicit in this attitude was an endorsement and legitimation
of the modern/Western ontology of ranking states. Modernization14
was the right thing to do – Turkey and Japan had something to teach
states in their respective regions because they had traveled down that
path fi rst, just as they had themselves learned from the West. Or as
Goffman put it: “The stigmatized individual exhibits a tendency to
stratify his ‘own’ to the degree to which their stigma is apparent and
obtrusive. He can then take up in regard to those who are more evi-
dently stigmatized than himself the attitudes the normals take to
him.”15 This kind of attitude was especially evident in Turkish actions
in the 1920s. We see a similar dynamic at work with the Japanese
actively pushing the Japanese model of development in Asia,16 and
remaining rather aloof to regional and Third World efforts to ques-
tion the international economic order. In both cases, problems in
the “Third World” are severed from their international context and
reduced to being responsibilities of various local governments – if
Turkey and Japan could solve17 their modernity problem, so could

14
Of course, this term meant something other in the 1920s than it did in the
1950s.
15
Goffman, Stigma, p. 107.
16
Modernization and development with an Asian twist; just as the Turkish
model is modernization and secularism within an Islamic context.
17
I am not claiming that Turkey solved this problem, but rather depicting how
the Turks framed the issue.
250 Conclusion

other disadvantaged states, and if they couldn’t, the implication is

that it was because they were not as deserving.18
It is possible to read the so-called sea-changes in recent Turkish
and Japanese foreign policy simply as an extension and an amplifica-
tion of this previous side strategy. In the post-Cold War international
system, the limits of pursuing a strategy of assimilation are becoming
harder to ignore. Ironically, this has much to do with the fact that the
norms of the international system have become more homogenized
due to the past successes of socialization pressures. This is also the
second19 reason why post-Soviet Russia has been much less commit-
ted to socialization as a strategy for coping with its stigmatization
than either Turkey or Japan were after their defeats.
When the Ottoman Empire was defeated, the international sys-
tem was not yet truly global. There were still territories without full
sovereign recognition; most European powers still had colonies and
mandates; and the Bolsheviks were an unknown and unpredictable
factor. Western powers worried that any one of these variables could
be manipulated by the new Turkish state. Similarly, during the Cold
War, the existence of the Eastern Bloc and even the nonaligned move-
ment created the illusion that Japan might defect. As documented in
Chapter 4, despite the occupation, the presence of communist sympa-
thies among the Japanese population, for instance, remained a serious
concern for both Japanese policy-makers and their American allies.
However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the only viable20 norma-
tive alternative to the Western model also collapsed: in this post-Cold
War world, where else would Russia go, if not toward the West (and
to the “End of History”)?
The fact that Turkey and Japan emerged from their defeats into
tiered and divided international environments made them seem more
likely to defect, but it is those environments which made the recon-
struction efforts undertaken to gain respect from the West seem
worthwhile to domestic constituencies. Strategies designed to obfus-
cate or correct stigmatizing attributes are much more attractive in
rigidly and openly stratified societies; the pay-off is much higher.

18
Such an attitude also justifies the imperial past.
19
In addition to the comparatively friendly treatment it received after defeat as
discussed above.
20
Again, as discussed in Chapter 2 , substantively, the Soviet model was never
much of an alternative at all to the Western state ideal. But socially, it was.
Conclusion 251

Unlike Turkey or Japan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia
faced an international environment wherein the “ideal” state norm
had come to be expressed in universalized language and there seemed
to be no explicit standards for picking winners and losers. Emulation
under those conditions has uncertain status yields. Furthermore, lack
of alternative logics in the international system made the West less
willing to feign interest in Russia’s overtures – an additional factor
which also dampened whatever initial enthusiasm the Russian public
felt about adopting Western models. As discussed in Chapter 5, all
of these factors have thus far led Russia down a novel but somewhat
impotent path: recently, Russia has been maintaining a stance of rhet-
orical hostility but is unable to reject the normative order in actuality
by offering an alternative worldview. This performance is directed to
some degree at capturing recognition from the East and the South.
This is where the possible shift in Turkey’s and Japan’s trajec-
tory points to a convergence with Russia. Turkey and Japan increas-
ingly have to face the reality that in today’s international context,
states such as Iran and China – states which are more secure in their
“Asian”/“Eastern” identities – seem to have more cachet with non-
Western populations increasingly disenfranchised with the hollow
promises of international society than the “teacher’s pets”. Yet, Turkey
and Japan are very much constrained by trajectories they followed in
the twentieth century – and cannot put up the rhetorical performance
Russia is offering without risking their hard-earned semi-Western
position (especially considering the reaction even little protestations
are getting). It is not surprising, therefore, that both countries have
latched onto the discourse of the “Clash of Civilizations” as a way
out of this conundrum – both Turkey and Japan see an opportunity
in this “clash” to turn what used to be an afterthought, i.e. relations
with the East, into an explicit strategy to redefi ne their importance
for the West. To that end, both Turkey and Japan are actively spon-
soring conferences and workshops21 devoted to exploring civiliza-
tional issues. From a systemic perspective, there is not that much

21
Turkey hosted its most recent “Alliance of Civilizations” conference on
April 6, 2009, with high-profi le names such as US President Obama, the UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and many prime ministers from around
the world in attendance. See Leheny, “The Samurai Ride to Huntington’s
Rescue,” for a discussion of Japan’s similar efforts to capitalize on “the clash
of civilizations.”
252 Conclusion

difference between this strategy and that favored by Russia at the

moment. Without a substantial ideology of rejection to back it up,
the Eastward-looking Eurasianist policies differ from the “bridging”
efforts primarily in their rhetorical tone.
Given that conclusion, this might strike the reader as an inop-
portune moment to call for more attention to be paid to the social
nature of the international system. It could be further argued that
the international system, however socially stratified it had been in the
past, has, over time, come to resemble more or less the world realists
have described – one in which social constraints and stigmas play an
increasingly diminished role. If that is true, perhaps mainstream IR
theories are wrong about their projections into the past, but are not
so problematic if we want to make sense of the present or predict the
future.
I am willing to concede that the international system, very much
like its liberal domestic cousin, has moved from patterns of overt
stratification and stigmatization toward formal equality and dis-
courses of cultural tolerance. 22 Overall, this has been a positive devel-
opment. I do not have a problem with the argument that the system
of sovereign equality created after World War II is preferable to the
nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization. It is also plausible that
as a result of these trends, more states in the international system
have come to resemble (or resemble to a greater degree than before)
the ideal-typical agents they were always assumed to be by IR theory.
However, neither of those arguments should lead us to conclude that
social stratification is a thing of the past in international relations.
There are still “established” and “outsiders,” “natives” and “stran-
gers” in the international society. What is more, the make-up of those
groups has changed very little in the intervening century between the
Standard of Civilization and the present day. If anything, that fact
should give us serious pause for thought.
For the majority of states in the international system, their place-
ment along the historical established-outsider divide has been most
formative and path-determinative. We know that social stratification
persists in domestic systems even in the face of legal equality, and we

22
“Emancipated from modern hubris, the postmodern mind has less need for
cruelty and humiliating the Other; it can afford Richard Rorty’s ‘kindness.’”
Bauman, Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 257.
Conclusion 253

also know how much of an obstacle social inequality may be for indi-
viduals to fully exercise their autonomy – how is that lesson so eas-
ily forgotten in international relations? In this book, I have analyzed
the behavior of those most “fortunate” among the outsiders: states
that had enough of an ontological coherence, bureaucratic tradition,
material base, and institutional framework to cope with the stigma-
tization that accompanies being on the wrong side of the social divide
in a relatively autonomous manner. Even such states were traumatized
by their manner of incorporation into the modern international order,
and their state identities have evolved around that experience. Most
states in the periphery were absorbed in a much more violent manner;
and they face the international normative order with fewer resources,
even fewer choices, and greater stigma burdens.
The theoretical neglect of the social divisions that dominated inter-
national relations for the duration of the modern states system was
and is a serious problem. My analysis above, as I am sure astute read-
ers have recognized, leads to the rather twisted conclusion that with-
holding equal recognition from defeated outsider states makes them
more willing to emulate the dominant international norms domes-
tically and play nice internationally. However, we should not forget
that societal models that did not deliver on their upward mobility
promise proved rather unstable in modernity. There may be a limit
to how long the majority of the world’s population will tolerate living
under an international system whose rules they have very little input
in, and one in which even the most successful of outsiders (e.g. Japan)
are never accorded the full respect that their material success entitles
them to. There is a reason why the schadenfreude felt at the expense
of Western powers over a wide-ranging scale of phenomena, from the
9/11 attacks to the verbal dressings-down delivered by Putin, is not
confi ned to the immediate supporters of the perpetrators, but rather is
widespread throughout what is now called “the Global South.”
As I pointed out in the Introduction, with reference to Orhan
Pamuk’s remarks, what people want most of all is to matter, and what
keeps their faith in any system is the hope that they may matter some
day, even if they do not today. This is also why, for instance, people
all around the world were enthusiastic about the election of Barack
Obama as the President of the United States – in his person, he sym-
bolized the hope that “others” and “outsiders,” too, can be acknowl-
edged one day. I do not want to overstate the importance of emotions
254 Conclusion

in foreign policy, but I do want to offer a humble correction to a vast

literature that, for the last 50 years, has largely pretended that they
cease to exist once one crosses the imaginary threshold of the “inter-
national.” To deny the existence of an international society with its
own logic of stratification is not a neutral act – it is an act of power
which perpetuates those very dynamics.
Acknowledging that people need hope and a modicum of real recog-
nition in order to keep trudging along is not romanticism. It is the height
of rationality. As Hegel pointed out, mankind’s eternal quest for recog-
nition is intimately connected with our drive toward rationality. The
rational solution for long-term systemic stability is in striking the right
balance between upward mobility and privilege distribution. Simply put,
we need a more meritocratic international system, instead of one that is
only described as such. In domestic societies, the social inequalities cre-
ated by historical injustices make meritocracy a difficult ideal to achieve.
However, in the IR discipline, we have barely even begun to accept that
such social inequalities exist. It is about time we remembered.
There is also something that “outsiders” can do about their situ-
ation. As I noted at the outset of this chapter, the choice between
Herodianism and Zeolotry is really no choice at all because both
choices reaffi rm the privileged position of the West, of modernity, as
the center to react to and to order one’s behavior around. Both the
Zealots and the Herodians live under the imagined gaze of the West.
Iran is no more free of the trappings of modernity, of the trauma of
Westernization, than Turkey is. The only way out of the impasse is
to truly make no choice at all, and resign oneself to living in a condi-
tion of ambivalence. True manifestation of agency, of sovereignty, of
positive freedom can only be attained by facing one’s own ontological
insecurity, by realizing that self-construction is an inevitable part of
existence. The master, the natives, the established do not ever address
the tentativeness of their ontological condition – they side-step the
issue by reveling in the simulated dynamics of mastery, agency, and
domination. Furthermore, because of the seeming naturalness of their
condition, they are most likely oblivious to the fact that their self-
image is an illusion. This is why in Kojève’s reading of the Hegelian
master–slave dynamic, the “slave” is the only party with real hope
of attaining true freedom.23 Not having the protective cushion of

23
Kojève, Introduction, pp. 20–2.
Conclusion 255

normativity means being forced to face the world every day in its
uncertainty, to be forced to be an agent every day, to not have the abil-
ity to take anything for granted, to have to consider every action as
a potentially constitutive performance – and that is very frightening
(not to mention tiring). This is perhaps why in the world of outsid-
ers, those who are best suited to grasp the full implications of such
a condition have been the worst offenders in perpetuating the hier-
archies of modernity. Both auto-Orientalism and its mirror image,
the escape into strangerhood, have the same limited redeeming value
of fi xing one’s place in the world. If only outsiders could realize that
they do not have to settle for that and accept that an ordered world
with a fi xed center is itself a sham, they may perhaps be able to liber-
ate themselves.
I opened the book by talking about Orhan Pamuk, so let me close
with him as well – he made the point I am trying to make here much
more eloquently in his Nobel Lecture:

This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much
importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that
compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a
faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and
understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But
this, as I know from my own and my father’s writing, is a troubled opti-
mism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being
left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all
his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an
essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled
with this great writer through his love–hate relationship with the West, to
behold the other world he has built on the other side.

It is my humble hope that this book will be one of the many stepping
stones to that other side, the side without a center.
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Index

9/11 232 empire 86, 112

1856 declaration (Islahat Fermanι) Turkey relations 141
118, 123 views on Turkey 139
Brown, Charlie 248
Abdülmecid II 34 Bukovansky, Mlada 45
acceptance, stigmatization 96 Bull, Hedley 62
Afghanistan 134 Burke, Edmund 74
agrarian empires Buruma, Ian 160, 161, 176
modernity transition 38, 42–4 Buzan, Barry 23
stigmatization 61
AKP (Justice and Development Party) Caliphate 126, 129, 133, 144, 146
(Turkey) 246 capitalism 41
Alexander II, Emperor of Russia 208 Carr, E. H. 46
animalistic behavior 70 case studies, use of 23, 25
Ankara Assembly 127, 129 Cecil, Lord Robert 111
anomie 66, 71 Chaadaev, Peter 208
Aras, Tevfi k Rüştü 135, 140 chapter outlines 13–26
argument outline 12 Chechnya 232
Aristotle 69, 241 China 162 , 167
armed forces 151 Japanese war against 167, 168–70
arriviste strategy 106–8 Christians 117, 120
assimilation 22 , 247–8 citizenship 80–2
Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 36, 112 , 113, civilization standard 53, 83–7, 93
127–9, 142–3, 145–8, 153, 155 Japan 161–6
Atay, Falih Rιfkι 146 Ottoman Empire 119
atrocities 198 Turkey 143–8
authenticity 94 Clark, Ian 90, 93
autonomy 67 closure 52
Cold War 197, 215, 217, 224
Badgley, John H. 188 collective narratives 4
Balkans 135 Committee of Union and Progress
Bauman, Zygmunt 55, 98, 242 , 243, (CUP) (Turkey) 35, 124
247 Concert of Europe 205
Befu, Harumi 193 constitutions 177
Berlin, Isaiah 67, 72 constructivism 14–16, 17
Billington, James 208 “correction,” stigmatization 97, 105
Bolsheviks 36, 210–12 , 213, 216 Crimean War 207
Bourdieu, Pierre 100 critical realism 25
Brines, Russell 175 CUP (Committee of Union and
Britain 48 Progress) (Turkey) 35, 124

286
Index 287

defeat, state responses to 105 Germans, The (Elias) 101, 102

defense expenditure 190 Germany 52 , 76, 199
democratic governance 91–5 Giddens, Anthony 45, 62
Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) 246 Gilman, Sander 79
Derluguian, Georgi 29, 214, 217 global hierarchies 92
Deudney, Daniel 218 Goffman, Erving 3, 8, 11, 59, 63, 95,
development theory 90–1, 92 123, 154, 249
dichotomies 5, 6, 48, 87, 242 Goldstone, Jack 25
discrimination 95 Gong, Gerrit 23, 39
DJP (Democratic Party of Gorbachev, Mikhail 218–20
Japan) 246 governance 91–5
Dodge, Joseph 179 great powers 64, 199
dominant groups 83 Greece 84, 97
dress codes 60 Turkey relations 135
Dulles, John Foster 179 Turkish Independence War
129
East/West dichotomy 5, 6, 48, 87 Greenfeld, Liah 78
economic development 87–91 Grew, Joseph C. 129
educated classes 55 Grotius, Hugo 48
egalitarianism 78 group narratives 4
Elias, Norbert 10, 52 , 57, 101, 102 Group of Eight (G-8) 231
elites 32 , 54–6, 165 Group of Seven (G-7) 229
emancipation of serfs 208 gunpowder empires see agrarian
empiricism 25 empires
emulation 19, 39
English, Robert 207 habitus concept 100–2 , 104
equal recognition 72–82 , 83 Halis, Keriman 158
see also recognition relationships hat law 147, 151
equality 74, 83 Hatoyama Ichiro 184
Esat, Mahmut 144 Hayes, Louis D. 183
established-outsider dynamic 10, 21, headscarves 156
39, 58–62 , 82–95, 192 , 243 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Europe 138–40, 204 67, 68, 71, 72 , 74, 254
exclusion, collectivist criteria 52 , 83 Herriot, M. E. 114
hierarchies 51, 67, 92
foreign policy 63, 221–35, 246 Himba tribe 60
Foreign Policy Concept (1993) Hobbes, Thomas 74
(Russia) 225, 227 Hobson, John M. 48
Foreign Policy Concept (2000) Huntington, Samuel 90
(Russia) 231
foreigners 81 Ikeda Hayato 186, 187
formal equality 83 Ikenberry, John G. 218
freedom 67, 70, 72–82 , 254 Imperial Japan 166–74
French Revolution 44, 46 imperialism 47, 49
Fukuyama, Francis 90 individual, the 73
industrialization 45, 88
G-7 229 inferiority 69
G-8 231 Inoguchi, Takashi 183
Galtung, Johan 193 insider–outsider status 29–56
Gellner, Ernest 41, 45, 50, 218 internalization, stigmatization 96
288 Index

international hierarchies 92 recognition strategy 248

international relations theories 241 reforms 34, 163
international system 17, 250, 252–3 response to World War II defeat
common ground 21 175–83
established-outsider dynamic Russia comparison 224
58–62 , 82–95, 192 security treaty 180, 185
insider–outsider status 29–56 socialization of 30–8
Japan 181–3, 193–200, 251 status enhancement 191–200, 248
modern states system emergence stigmatization of 9–12 , 170–2 , 183,
46–9 189, 199
modernity 6–8, 38–45 trade 164, 187
Russia 251 Turkey comparisons 174–5, 196
sociological frameworks 19 United Nations 184
Soviet Union 219 US occupation 194
stigmatization 63–82 US partnership 186
Turkey 149–50, 251 war against China 167, 168–70
Iran 134 war against Russia 167
Islahat Fermanι 118, 123 war crimes 198
Israel 65 Westernization 163
Jews, German emancipation of 76
Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus 25 Justice and Development Party (AKP)
Japan 130, 244 (Turkey) 246
1945–1974 160–200
American occupation 194 Kafka, Franz 27, 109
American traders 162 Karahan, Comrade 137
anti-American riots 185 Keene, Edward 48
Asia strategy 196 Kemal, Mustafa see Atatürk
attitudes to Asia 164, 182–3 Kemalist Republic 33
China relations 189 Kenkichi, Odera 170
civilization standard 161–6 Kishi Nobusuke 185
constitution 177 Kojève, Alexandre 70, 254
defeat 175–83, 193, 197 Korea 167, 169
defense expenditure 190 Kuchuk Kainardji, Treaty of 116, 120
economic policies 177, 187–8 Kunio, Yanagida 171
elites 56, 165
foreign policy 183, 188, 189, Lausanne Conference 130–2
246, 250 LDP (Liberal Democrat Party) (Japan)
“frustrated great power” 199 184
Germany comparison 199 League of Nations 86, 140–1
imperialism 166–74, 192 Lebow, Richard Ned 22 , 75, 88
insider–outsider status 29–30 legitimation of the state 77
in the international system 181–3, Leninism 217
193–200, 251 Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) (Japan)
leftists 178 184
Meiji Restoration 161–6 Loti, Pierre 163
militarism 35, 166–74, 192 Lynch, Allen 229
national habitus 102
nationalism 200 MacArthur, Douglas 175, 178, 179
peace treaty 180 McNeill, William 1
post-defeat dynamic 247 Manchuria 169
Index 289

Mann, Michael 49 Ottoman Empire 33, 61, 111, 204,

Markell, Patchen 68, 72 , 76 244
Marxism 88, 91, 211, 217 Christian groups within 117
Masaru, Nakayama 172 civilization standard 119
master–slave relationship 68–71, 77 collapse of 123–5
Matsuda, Takeshi 181 Committee of Union and Progress
mediocre man, the 79 35, 124
Meiji Restoration 34, 161–6 declinist historical tradition 121
Metternich, Prince 118 elites 56
military spending 190 historical phases 121
Miss Universe competition 158 Japan comparison 174–5
Mitchell, Tim 50 reforms 34
modern states system 46–9 Russia comparison 210
modernity 5, 10, 22 “Sick Man of Europe” label 119,
economic development 87–91 122
and the international system 6–8, stigmatization of 115–25
38–45 Westernization 44, 120, 121
outsider status 49–53 outsider states 49–53, 57–108, 253
social stratification 49–53
modernization theory 90–1 pacifism 200
Mongols 215–16 Pamuk, Orhan 1, 2 , 5, 6, 255
Pan-Turkism 124
nation states see states Pasha, İsmet 130
national identity 100–2 , 103 “passing,” stigmatization 96–7, 105
Japan 102 peripheral regions 94
Russia 102 , 220 persuasion 16
stigmatization 3–5 Peter the Great 203
Turkey 1–5 Plato 75
National Security Concept (1997) Polevoi, Nikolai 205
(Russia) 227 popular sovereignty 44
nationalism 50, 77, 200, 222 positive freedom 67, 70, 72–82 , 254
negative freedom 74 power differentials 58
neorealism 31 priestly strategy 104, 107
Nettl, J. P. 89 Putin, Vladimir 221, 228, 230–5
Neumann, Iver B. 203, 204, 213, 235
New Order in the East Proclamation racism 48, 170
172 recognition relationships 67–71,
New Thinking, Soviet reforms 72–82 , 83, 217, 248, 254
218–20, 225 reform strategies 34–5
Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia 206–7 rejection strategy, stigmatization 171
Nietzsche, Friedrich 78–9 research approach 24–5
normalcy, stigmatization 96 ressentiment strategy 78, 104, 106–8
“normals” 241 revolutions 210
normative dichotomies 242 Rhodes, Cecil 47
normative frameworks 94 Robertson, Roland 89
norms 16, 82 , 94, 239, 242 Ruggie, John Gerard 13, 19, 31, 40
Russia
ontological security 62 1990–2007 201–39
Oriental Christendom 120 anti-Western policies 229
Orientalism 193, 215 authoritarianism 234, 238
290 Index

Russia (cont.) see also master–slave relationship

Bolshevism 36 Slavophiles 207
elites 56 social exclusion 67
energy exports 234 social hierarchies 67
Eurasian identity 233, 236 social inequalities 254
foreign policy 221–35 social stratification 49–53, 252
insider–outsider status 29–30 socialization 14–16 , 19, 22–3,
in the international system 251 30–8
Japan comparison 224 society, perspectives of 20
moderate conservatives 222 “sour grapes” strategy, stigmatization
moderate liberals 221 171
national habitus 102 sovereignty 44, 49, 70, 73, 254
national identity 220 Soviet Union 87, 91, 98, 153, 213–18
National Security Concept 227 collapse of 220
nationalism 222 economic policies 214
norms 239 economic stagnation 218
Ottoman Empire comparison 210 equal recognition demands 217
Ottoman Empire relations 116 in the international system 219
post-defeat dynamic 244–6 Japan relations 178
post-Napoleonic Wars 205 reforms 218–20
pro-Western groups 221, 225–6 stigmatization of 213, 215–16
pro-Western policies 232 Turkey relations 137–8
recognition quest 238 Stalinism 91, 214
reforms 34, 208, 209 Standard of Civilization
revolution 210 see civilization standard
socialization of 30–8 states
state identity 223 formation of 102
status restoration 235–9 habitus concept 100–2 , 104
stigmatization of 9–12 , 223 identity attributes 63, 65, 103
Turkey comparison 211–12 , 224 as outsiders 49–53, 57–108, 253
US relations 234 personification of 100
war against Japan 167 responses to defeat 105
and the West 236–9 stigmatization responses 95–108
Westernization 203 strategy selection 102–8
see also Soviet Union status standards 191–200
stigmatization 7, 241, 243, 249, 253
Sadabad Pact 134 acceptance 96
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 111 agrarian empires 61
SCAP see Supreme Commander of the “correction” 97, 105
Allied Powers embracing of 98
Scheler, Max 106 existential dilemmas 95
scientific method 50 historical timing 99
secularism 157 internalization 96
self-sovereignty 73 in the international system
serfs, emancipation of 208 63–82
shame 52 , 59–60, 95 Japan 9–12 , 170–2 , 183, 189, 199
Sharman, J. C. 48 modern state emergence 71–82
Sher’ia law 118 and national identity 3–5
“Sick Man of Europe” label 119, 122 normalcy 96
slave morality 78 Ottoman Empire 115–25
Index 291

“passing” 96–7, 105 sovereignty movements 154

Russia 9–12 , 223 Soviet relations 135–8, 153–4
Soviet Union 213, 215–16 state identity 156–8
state strategies 95–108 status enhancement 248
timing of 99 stigmatization of 7–12 , 84, 150,
Turkey 7–12 , 150, 156 156
stratification 49–53, 252 Westernization 85, 141–8, 153,
Suleiman the Magnificent 116 155, 156, 240
Suphi, Hamdullah 144 see also Ottoman Empire
Supreme Commander of the Allied Turkish Hearth, The 143
Powers (SCAP) 176, 178 Twenty Years’ Crisis, The (Carr) 47
Suzuki, Shogo 164, 166, 199, 200
underdeveloped countries 89–91
Tanaka, Stefan 165 United Nations 89, 184
Tanzimat Declaration 34, 117 United States 162 , 194, 195
terrorism 94 universal identity 73
Thirty Years War 40 US–Japan Security Treaty 180, 185
Tocqueville, Alexis de 74
tourism 94 Wallerstein, Immanuel Maurice 43,
Toynbee, Arnold 84, 120, 155, 240 217
toyo (Eastern culture) 165 Waltz, Kenneth 58, 63, 64
Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji 116, 120 comments on socialization 213
Tsygankov, Andrei 201 war crimes 198
Turkey 244 Washington Times 228
1918–1938 111–59 Weber, Max 51
army modernization 151 Wendt, Alexander 17, 31, 64
Balkan relations 135 West, the, Russia relations 228,
civilization standard 143–8 236–9
Eastern state relations 132–5 Western Europe 40–5
European views on 138–40 Western hegemony, social impact of
foreign policy 246, 250 53–6
Independence War 125–9 Western Question in Greece and
insider–outsider status 29–30 Turkey, The (Toynbee) 84
in the international system 149–50, Westernization 10
251 Japan 163
Kemalist regime 33, 211–12 Ottoman Empire 120, 121
League of Nations 140–1 Russia 203
modernization 141–8 Turkey 141–8, 153, 155, 156, 240
national habitus 102 Winston Parva study (Elias and
national identity 1–5 Scotson) 52 , 58–9, 65, 69, 82
normalcy quest 125–32 Wittfogel, Karl A. 215
post-defeat dynamic 247 World Polity school 5, 17, 23
recognition strategy 248 World War II 172
religion 146
Republic’s birth 129–32 Yack, Bernard 77
Russia comparison 211–12 , 224 Yeltsin, Boris 226–9
secularism 157 Yoshida Doctrine 184, 194, 195
socialization of 30–8, 152 Yoshida Shigeru 36, 176, 180, 181–3
 Cambridge Studies in International Relations

105 Ken Booth

Theory of world security
104 Benjamin Miller
States, nations and the great powers
The sources of regional war and peace
103 Beate Jahn (ed.)
Classical theory in international relations
102 Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami
The English School of international relations
A contemporary reassessment
101 Colin Wight
Agents, structures and international relations
Politics as ontology
100 Michael C. Williams
The realist tradition and the limits of international relations
99 Ivan Arreguín-Toft
How the weak win wars
A theory of asymmetric confl ict
98 Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall
Power in global governance
97 Yale H. Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach
Remapping global politics
History’s revenge and future shock
96 Christian Reus-Smit
The politics of international law
95 Barry Buzan
From international to world society?
English School theory and the social structure of globalisation
94 K. J. Holsti
Taming the sovereigns
Institutional change in international politics
93 Bruce Cronin
Institutions for the common good
International protection regimes in international security
92 Paul Keal
European conquest and the rights of indigenous peoples
The moral backwardness of international society
91 Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver
Regions and powers
The structure of international security
90 A. Claire Cutler
Private power and global authority
Transnational merchant law in the global political economy
89 Patrick M. Morgan
Deterrence now
88 Susan Sell
Private power, public law
The globalization of intellectual property rights
87 Nina Tannenwald
The nuclear taboo
The United States and the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945
86 Linda Weiss
States in the global economy
Bringing domestic institutions back in
85 Rodney Bruce Hall and Thomas J. Biersteker (eds.)
The emergence of private authority in global governance
84 Heather Rae
State identities and the homogenisation of peoples
83 Maja Zehfuss
Constructivism in international relations
The politics of reality
82 Paul K. Ruth and Todd Allee
The democratic peace and territorial conflict in the twentieth century
81 Neta C. Crawford
Argument and change in world politics
Ethics, decolonization and humanitarian intervention
80 Douglas Lemke
Regions of war and peace
79 Richard Shapcott
Justice, community and dialogue in international relations
78 Phil Steinberg
The social construction of the ocean
77 Christine Sylvester
Feminist international relations
An unfi nished journey
76 Kenneth A. Schultz
Democracy and coercive diplomacy
75 David Houghton
US foreign policy and the Iran hostage crisis
74 Cecilia Albin
Justice and fairness in international negotiation
73 Martin Shaw
Theory of the global state
Globality as an unfi nished revolution
72 Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour
Perfect deterrence
71 Robert O’Brien, Anne Marie Goetz , Jan Aart Scholte and Marc Williams
Contesting global governance
Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements
70 Roland Bleiker
Popular dissent, human agency and global politics
69 Bill McSweeney
Security, identity and interests
A sociology of international relations
68 Molly Cochran
Normative theory in international relations
A pragmatic approach
67 Alexander Wendt
Social theory of international politics
66 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.)
The power of human rights
International norms and domestic change
65 Daniel W. Drezner
The sanctions paradox
Economic statecraft and international relations
64 Viva Ona Bartkus
The dynamic of secession
63 John A. Vasquez
The power of power politics
From classical realism to neotraditionalism
62 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.)
Security communities
61 Charles Jones
E. H. Carr and international relations
A duty to lie
60 Jeffrey W. Knopf
Domestic society and international cooperation
The impact of protest on US arms control policy
59 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf
The republican legacy in international thought
58 Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer
Nations at war
A scientific study of international confl ict
57 Randall D. Germain
The international organization of credit
States and global fi nance in the world economy
56 N. Piers Ludlow
Dealing with Britain
The Six and the fi rst UK application to the EEC
55 Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger
Theories of international regimes
54 Miranda A. Schreurs and Elizabeth C. Economy (eds.)
The internationalization of environmental protection
53 James N. Rosenau
Along the domestic–foreign frontier
Exploring governance in a turbulent world
52 John M. Hobson
The wealth of states
A comparative sociology of international economic and political change
51 Kalevi J. Holsti
The state, war, and the state of war
50 Christopher Clapham
Africa and the international system
The politics of state survival
49 Susan Strange
The retreat of the state
The diffusion of power in the world economy
48 William I. Robinson
Promoting polyarchy
Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony
47 Roger Spegele
Political realism in international theory
46 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.)
State sovereignty as social construct
45 Mervyn Frost
Ethics in international relations
A constitutive theory
44 Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton
Governing global networks
International regimes for transportation and communications
43 Mark Neufeld
The restructuring of international relations theory
42 Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.)
Bringing transnational relations back in
Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions
41 Hayward R. Alker
Rediscoveries and reformulations
Humanistic methodologies for international studies
40 Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair
Approaches to world order
39 Jens Bartelson
A genealogy of sovereignty
38 Mark Rupert
Producing hegemony
The politics of mass production and American global power
37 Cynthia Weber
Simulating sovereignty
Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange
36 Gary Goertz
Contexts of international politics
35 James L. Richardson
Crisis diplomacy
The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century
34 Bradley S. Klein
Strategic studies and world order
The global politics of deterrence
33 T. V. Paul
Asymmetric confl icts
War initiation by weaker powers
32 Christine Sylvester
Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern era
31 Peter J. Schraeder
US foreign policy toward Africa
Incrementalism, crisis and change
30 Graham Spinardi
From Polaris to Trident
The development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile technology
29 David A. Welch
Justice and the genesis of war
28 Russell J. Leng
Interstate crisis behavior, 1816–1980
Realism versus reciprocity
27 John A. Vasquez
The war puzzle
26 Stephen Gill (ed.)
Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations
25 Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds.)
From cold war to collapse
Theory and world politics in the 1980s
24 R. B. J. Walker
Inside/outside
International relations as political theory
23 Edward Reiss
The strategic defense initiative
22 Keith Krause
Arms and the state
Patterns of military production and trade
21 Roger Buckley
US–Japan alliance diplomacy 1945–1990
20 James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.)
Governance without government
Order and change in world politics
19 Michael Nicholson
Rationality and the analysis of international confl ict
18 John Stopford and Susan Strange
Rival states, rival fi rms
Competition for world market shares
17 Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.)
Traditions of international ethics
16 Charles F. Doran
Systems in crisis
New imperatives of high politics at century’s end
15 Deon Geldenhuys
Isolated states
A comparative analysis
14 Kalevi J. Holsti
Peace and war
Armed confl icts and international order 1648–1989
13 Saki Dockrill
Britain’s policy for West German rearmament 1950–1955
12 Robert H. Jackson
Quasi-states
Sovereignty, international relations and the third world
11 James Barber and John Barratt
South Africa’s foreign policy
The search for status and security 1945–1988
10 James Mayall
Nationalism and international society
9 William Bloom
Personal identity, national identity and international relations
8 Zeev Maoz
National choices and international processes
7 Ian Clark
The hierarchy of states
Reform and resistance in the international order
6 Hidemi Suganami
The domestic analogy and world order proposals
5 Stephen Gill
American hegemony and the Trilateral Commission
4 Michael C. Pugh
The ANZUS crisis, nuclear visiting and deterrence
3 Michael Nicholson
Formal theories in international relations
2 Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Rules, norms, and decisions
On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international
relations and domestic affairs
1 Myles L. C. Robertson
Soviet policy towards Japan
An analysis of trends in the 1970s and 1980s