CIAO DATE: 05/2011
Volume: 48, Issue: 1
January 2011
Special issue: Friendship in international relations
Andrea Oelsner, Antoine Vion
From Aristotle to Kant, Schmitt and Derrida, philosophers have explored the links between friendship and politics. In 2007, Critical Review of Social and Political Philosophy published a Special Issue on ‘Friendship in Politics’ discussing friendship as a specific dimension of both domestic and international politics (Smith and King, 2007).
Friendship and the world of states
Graham M Smith
What contribution can a theorization of friendship offer to the understanding of the world of states? It is argued here that the contemporary view of friendship eclipses a longer and broader appreciation. As such, the view of friendship that identifies it as affective, private and particular (here termed the contemporary-affective view) is one instance of a much wider cluster of ideas sharing overlapping characteristics. So conceptualized, ‘friendship’ is the concern with what binds person-to-person. It is a concern with the nature and fabric of the political. Seen from this vantage point, friendship highlights what an analysis through the state tends to overshadow: the enduring affinities, identifications and bonds that permeate the dynamics of the world of states. Thus, friendship need not remain the preserve of the premodern (Aristotle), nor be usurped as an adjunct to sovereignty and power (Schmitt), but investigated as an ongoing site of analysis for phenomena within, between and beyond states.
Fraternity and a global difference principle: A feminist critique of Rawls and Pogge
Sibyl A Schwarzenbach
Despite recent cracks in the dominant Hobbesian world picture of international relations (IR) - as the resurgence of neo-Kantianism in the area of ‘global justice' bears witness - a discussion of friendship still remains absent. This article focusses on the important debate concerning the possibility of a global ‘difference principle': that principle which John Rawls in A Theory of Justice considers an ‘expression of fraternity' between citizens. Although in his later work Rawls explicitly denies that his difference principle applies worldwide and between ‘people', others (most famously Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge) defend a global version of it nonetheless. Yet, there is no talk of fraternity by these latter thinkers. I argue that both these positions are mistaken. Not only is an analysis of friendship necessary for any adequate account of justice - whether domestic or global - but the form this political friendship takes emerges as critical to the substantive debate.
A history of the language of friendship in international treaties
Heather Devere, Simon Mark, Jane Verbitsky
While the concept of friendship has been largely invisible within Western political debate, in the international political domain, ‘friendship’ and the language of friends have been prominent in treaties and alliances between nations. Database searches on the topic of ‘politics and friendship’ locate predominantly references concerning relationships between states. However, it has been war and enmity rather than friendship that has dominated analysis in international relations literature. In this article we provide a history of international treaties, focusing in particular on those named as friendship treaties. We will discuss the use of concepts and terminology related to friendship and the nomenclature associated with international alliances. It will be argued that friendship is more a tool of public relations and spin, rather than diplomacy and peace-building, and the cynical use of friendship does not sit easily with the Nehruvian concept of friendship as an important method of diplomacy that can act as a path to peace, goodwill and understanding between states and nations.
Friendship of the enemies: Twentieth century treaties of the United Kingdom and the USSR
Evgeny Roschchin
This article focuses on the use of the concept of friendship in the treaties of friendship concluded by the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. The range of reference of friendship and its usage by these two political rivals display a number of commonalities, which indicate a key role this concept plays in maintaining the existing order of interstate relations. The concept is conventionally used in the treaties marking the changes in the global or regional political settings. In the texts of these treaties appeals to friendship are made together with the expression of respect for state sovereignty, independence, borders and so on. It also appears as an exclusive and contractual relationship. These conventions in diplomatic rhetoric, meant to reassert and legitimize the particularistic sovereign order, pose a challenge to the attempts to conceive of international relations in terms of friendship as an ethical, universal and benevolent phenomenon.
Unsociable sociability: The paradox of Canadian-American friendship
Caroline Patsias, Dany Deschenes
Since the end of World War II, relations between Canadian and US leaders have become difficult, as the absence of the unifying force of war led to different political visions. However, on the whole, and in spite of a power differential that has grown since 1945, relations between Canada and the United States have nevertheless been good. How is this explained? In this reflection, rather than taking a structural-realist approach, we build on a perspective proposed by Stéphane Roussel in his theory on democratic peace between Canada and the United States. Roussel showed how the constructivist model could justify the absence of coercion and the relatively egalitarian cooperation between both states. While Roussel's studies refer only to the 1867–1958 period, we broaden the perspective to include the contemporary period and propose that the ‘unsocial sociability’ at the heart of Canadian-American relations is due to the recognition of the democratic nature of the other's regime and the implementation of institutional mechanisms and techniques.
'Great friends': Creating legacies, networks and policies that perpetuate the memory of the Fathers of Europe
Cornelia Constantin
This article highlights the uses of friendship by associations that perpetuate the memory of the Fathers of Europe. It demonstrates that the invention of the tradition of the ‘Fathers of Europe’ is not the monopoly of European institutions. It was made possible by the mobilization of associations of heirs that have perpetuated these Fathers’ memory since the 1960s. From a social history perspective, the article analyzes some case studies that show how associations of friends devoted to the Fathers of Europe have been created, and what kind of activities they have led throughout time. International friendship emerges as a set of reconstructed memories through the practices of the transnational spheres, by transforming a dead friend into an exemplary friend in order to legitimize a certain vision of the European past.
Friends in the region: A comparative study on friendship building in regional integration
Andrea Oelsner, Antoine Vion
The role of international friendship in regional integration – be it as one of encouraging integration or as its by-product – tends to be overshadowed by (realist) assumptions of naked self-interest. This article aims to open up a space for friendship in the study of regional integration, by exploring the structuration of a series of speech acts and institutional facts that can be interpreted as signs of engagement in, and proofs of, friendship. In doing this, it puts forward a new analytical perspective and methodological framework. The case studies chosen to illustrate the analysis – the Franco–German and the Argentine–Brazilian dyads – reflect the historical meaning of the experience of moving away from enmity/antagonism towards building relationships based on mutual trust, which put these dyads at the centre of regional integration processes.