Slaughter G20 review

Mark Beeson

Slaughter G20 review

Mark Beeson

2020, Australian Journal of Politics & History

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178 Book Reviews “are losing their ability to imagine what tragedy really is” (p.6). The authors quote Aristotle, who urged that an understanding of tragedy involved appreciating “not the thing that has happened, but the kind of thing that might happen” (p. 3). This work also suggests a link with the messianic strain of US historiography and international relations, spanning Francis Fukuyama and Samuel P. Huntington. But Brands and Edsel wish to make their mark, distancing themselves from such writers as “they reﬂected a belief that global politics were no longer tragic” (p.101). The ﬁgure of President Donald J. Trump looms large over the text, a disturbance the authors would rather wish was not there. They fear a retreat of the legionaries and foot soldiers, a return to post-World War I normalcy. This is not, strictly speaking, a text on history as a lesson of warning enlisted in the service of US power. The US imperium is facing challenges. Russia, China and Iran are not mere irritations but challengers to “the regional pillars of the US-led order” (p.128). They suggest various elements of “tragic sensibility Americans must recover” (p.146). Among these is the acceptance that tragedy is “normal” (p.147) and is “once again stalking global affairs” in the form of such challengers as “radical jihadist groups” (p. 149). The authors also suggest that US policy makers “reject complacency without falling into fatalism” (p.151); the need for collective action with an awareness that some form of sacriﬁce would be required (p.154); and the necessity for “timely and enduring action” (p.158). By resorting to tragedy as a didactic tool for US policy-makers, the authors nurse a fundamental misunderstanding. The Athenians understood the functions of drama but could hardly be blamed for not following its example in politics. Within it were the salutary warnings about weak institutions and frail human nature. The point missed by the authors is that dramaturgy and literature are almost never policy texts for politicians and decision-makers. Nor is there any evidence that making them so would necessarily result in better decision-making. The authors also misunderstand the central message of the Periclean oration (pp.19-20): once obtained, an empire is a dangerous, enervating thing. Many will agree that the US suffers from historical amnesia. But this is a book designed to undermine and scuttle threatened isolationism. The authors do accept that the democracy export business (“the use of force to catalyze political transformation in historically illiberal societies”) is ﬂawed (p.162). They also accept the old, rusted premise of realism: that the US needs to pick its ﬁghts, tolerate rogues if they cannot be removed, and be tolerant of the intolerable for the sake of stability. The presumption behind this, as with so much in the discourse of American exceptionalism, is that the US is indispensable, an arguable tragedy in and of itself. This text has certainly captured a mood, having garnered considerable praise. Whatever the problems with it, the overall message from Philip Bobbitt to Walter Russell Mead is simple: read it. A more critical combing of the text might suggest a different conclusion. History offers warnings, but be wary of history as it is told by those in the service of an idea, an ideology or a state. Nor will it do to confuse the ends of drama with those of Clio herself. BINOY KAMPMARK DOI:10.1111/ajph.12661 RMIT University, Melbourne The G20 and International Relations Theory: Perspectives of Global Summitry. Edited by Steven Slaughter (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2019), pp.231. £85.00 (cloth). The G20 has proved to be one of the more interesting international initiatives of recent years, even if there is a debate about just how much inﬂuence it might have had, and how Book Reviews 179 best to describe it. Given its still questionable signiﬁcance, some prospective readers might be forgiven for wondering whether it actually merits the production of an edited volume such as this. Rest assured, it does. Even in the unlikely event that the G20 fades into obscurity, this book provides not just a useful insight into its development thus far, but also an invaluable and innovative use of international relations theory to do so. Indeed, the best and most novel feature of this volume, in my view, is that it provides a clear demonstration of the relative strengths and weaknesses of various theoretical approaches to precisely the same topic. For students of international relations theory, this book is likely to provide an eye-opening and illuminating experience: the possible utility of various conceptual frameworks are not simply put to work, but their comparative merits and assumptions are also highlighted. Understanding why there are quite so many theoretical approaches in IR is always something of a mystery for students. While this book may not resolve that question, it will provide some much-needed moments of illumination. As such it can be recommended as a useful complement to any IR course. The paradigms explored via the comparative exploration of the G20 include all the usual suspects, and a couple that don’t usually get the attention they deserve, perhaps. In addition to realism, liberalism, rational choice, constructivism, feminism and the English School, there are also chapters from Gramscian, historical institutionalism, and even “green theory” perspectives. The authors of the various contributions are accomplished exponents of the approaches they adopt, and the overall effect is instructive, and not just for students of understudied “informal summits” such as the G20. Unsurprisingly but usefully, the authors come to quite different and sometimes surprising conclusions about the signiﬁcance of, and prospects for, the G20. Indeed, the book’s editor — Steven Slaughter — provides a realist analysis of the G20, which argues that it provides a “thin” form of global governance that states will ﬁnd useful in pursing traditional national interests. The chapter on rational choice theory was also similarly useful in illustrating the possible attractions of such an approach, even for sceptics such as myself. Using one institution to illustrate how and why IR scholars approach and analyse things in the way that they do is a very neat idea. The volume as a whole hangs together very well as a consequence. While the overall conclusion that the G20 has the capacity to be signiﬁcant but may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to fulﬁl its potential may not be that surprising, the way this conclusion is arrived at is both innovate and illuminating. Although recommending such volumes to students in particular may be pretty standard practice, in this book’s case, the advice is actually worth heeding. I learned a lot from it. The scholarly community might want to take notice, too. DOI:10.1111/ajph.12662 MARK BEESON University of Western

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