For the fifth issue of Volume 36 of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, we are proud to present six original research articles. In conceptual terms, this issue’s contributions engage with perennial IR concerns like power, resources, sovereignty, cooperation and (in)security. In empirical terms, the cases studied in this issue’s articles are predominantly from outside the Euro-Atlantic region.
First, Steven E. Lobell intervenes in the realist theoretical debate on preventive war by offering a more granular conception of power in the article ‘Preventive military strike or preventive war? The fungibility of power resources’. Empirically, the article examines Israel’s use of military strikes to delay Iraq’s (1981) and Syria’s (2007) nuclear weapons programs. Next, we present two articles that both study China’s much-debated Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). First, Hai Yang and Baldwin Van Gorp analyse the content of a purpose-built textual corpus on the BRI. Their article ‘A frame analysis of political-media discourse on the Belt and Road Initiative: evidence from China, Australia, India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States’ examines the rhetorical frames applied by Chinese officials on the one hand, and foreign elite media on the other, in communication about the BRI. Coming from a different perspective and methodology, Jiong Gong and Yinzhu Li present ‘Overseas economic interest perspective in foreign policy—a case study of China’. Here, they develop an analytical framework quantifying the economic interest of states with the aim of understanding the economic dimension of a state’s foreign policy rationale. Using this framework, the authors present an empirical study of Chinese Foreign Policy towards developing countries since the launch of the BRI, concluding that China in this period was motivated by economic interest alongside geopolitical and ideological considerations.
Moving to the East Mediterranean, Filippos Proedrou focuses on the geopolitical factors that drive the energy politics and rising tension in the region in ‘A geopolitical account of the Eastern Mediterranean conundrum: sovereignty, balance of power and energy security considerations’. Proedrou’s article traces how sovereignty, balance of power and geopolitical notions of energy security motivate the pipeline politics and quests for energy exploration rights of states in the region. The fifth article of this issue, Shintaro Hamanaka’s ‘Inter-regionalism in the Global South: comparison with extra-, cross-, trans-, and pan-regionalism’ refines our analytical apparatus as regards cooperation. The specific contribution of Hamanaka’s article lies in its differentiation between five forms of state(s)-led cooperation projects across regions (inter-, extra-, cross-, trans-, and pan-regionalism), and its use of Global South cases in comparing forms of cooperation, expanding the academic knowledge on regions’ external relations beyond the most commonly studied empirical case, namely the EU. Finally, Nimrod Rosler and Galia Press-Barnathan contribute to the burgeoning literature on ontological security with their article ‘Cultural sanctions and ontological (in)security: operationalisation in the context of mega-events’. The article aims to understand the impact of hosting and boycotting mega-events on society’s members sense of ontological security (OS). To this end, the authors present their study of survey responses by Jewish-Israelis in the context of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.
This issue of CRIA also features four book reviews. First, Nicholas Lees reviews Patrick James’ Realism and International Relations: A Graphic Turn Toward Scientific Progress, while Carl Death reviews No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-Changed World by Mathias Thaler. Next, Marcelle Trote Martins presents a review of From the Ashes of History: Collective Trauma and the Making of International Politics by Adam B. Lerner, while Shyam Saran’s How China Sees India and the World: The Authoritative Account of the India-China Relationship is reviewed by Javed Alam. All four book titles are from 2022.
As always, we would like to thank the contributors for choosing CRIA as the outlet for their innovative research. We also thank all the reviewers, whose work remains indispensable to our journal. Lastly, we thank our excellent editorial team involved in producing this issue.
The journal is especially interested in work that offers deep theoretical and historical analyses of global issues, rethinks our understandings of ‘historical IR’, and centres topics, communities and experiences left at the margins of the discipline. We warmly encourage the submission of work by scholars who are marginalised in global structures of knowledge production or underrepresented in disciplinary International Relations. CRIA also welcomes proposals for special issues (directed to the Editors-in-Chief). Book reviews should be directed to the Features Editor. Details and submission guidelines may be found here. We look forward to reading your work!
Editors-in-Chief
Cambridge Review of International Affairs