Books like Gender in International Relations

This slim volume by the French philosopher is one I have read many times; nearly every sentence is underlined. Though not strictly about international affairs, it was Agacinski that first sparked in me the sight of the far horizon: diarchy as the political system that should obtain between men and women. Once you understand that the face of humanity is dual, not single, everything changes. Agacinski was one of the crucial voices that led to the adoption of party candidate parity as the law of the land in France.

“Where are the women?” So goes this 1989 classic’s opening gambit.

We think politics is the domain of men, Enloe points out, but women have long been out there doing vital and often invisible work, whether as diplomats’ wives, sex workers recruited around US army bases, farmers, or labor leaders.

Bringing this gendered labor to the forefront of international relations is Enloe’s strength. She discusses how images of women “work,” as in the Chiquita Banana ads that introduced American housewives to this unusual fruit and helped expand United Fruit’s bloody empire, but also studies women’s transnational labor organizing.

Reading this book in graduate school guaranteed I would never think of those little stickers on bananas in the same way. Like many other historians of US foreign policy, I still assign sections from Enloe regularly, particularly in my “Transnational America” class. 

Waring, a former MP for New Zealand, wrote what I consider the foundational book in feminist political economy. Removing the scales from our eyes in this book, she questions how it is that when an oil tanker spills, that event adds to the GDP of a nation, but when a woman gives birth to a baby, that event adds nothing to the GDP. She was the first to note that the “production boundary” stipulated by the male-created GDP indicator completely invisibilizes—even erases—the enormous contribution of women, simply because it is unpaid and performed for members of the same household. Waring then goes further and asks how this gendered approach to understanding economic success actually destroys our goal of sustainable, functional societies.

Ruddick was a pioneer in her advocacy that feminist IR not only must deconstruct masculinist notions of security and peace, but it must build new paradigms on which healthy societies must be built. She argued that the sturdiest foundation for that rebuilding would be the practicalist reasoning that arises from the discipline of caregiving. Indeed, this would cede an intellectual advantage to women, who are often tasked with just such endeavors. One of the best dimensions of her work is her attempt to build a new language these practitioners could use to remain authentic to their vision while still permitting non-caregivers to understand and appreciate it. 

A lot of work on nuclear politics focuses on the policies and strategies of the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia. This book goes beyond that. The scope of Narang’s Nuclear Strategy is immense. It’s really two books in one. The first tells me why states adopt the nuclear posture—the doctrine and number of weapons—that they do. It’s a one-stop shop for learning about the origins and evolution of nuclear policy in China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa. Then I read on and find Narang goes further. The second book shows me the consequences of those decisions for conflict. The lessons of the book travel, and I find myself applying the nuclear posture categories that Narang identifies when thinking about nuclear developments today. 

I love this book because it’s an inspiring story of selfless patriotism, of six men of great wealth and accomplishment who set aside their private careers and personal ambitions to serve their country at a time of awesome need.

Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, George Kennan, Charles Bohlen–as America emerged victorious in World War II but uncertain about the future, these friends and colleagues crafted the policies that created what later became known as the “American Century.”

This book is a deeply researched, fast-paced story of unsung heroes that left me nostalgic about the nation’s glorious past and, even after 741 pages, thirsting for more.

A highly readable tome, Cooper’s account of how the oil politics of the 1970s revolutionized U.S. foreign policy and the Persian Gulf is a must-read for anyone who wants to know more about the political landscape of the Middle East. Cooper traces the personal interactions among the Shah of Iran, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, and the House of Saud in the midst of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the consequent oil embargo, the formation of OPEC, and the early stirrings of revolution in Iran. Perhaps most helpful, this book dispels many misperceptions about Iran under the Shah while also showing how the United States played an integral role in weakening his regime prior to the 1979 revolution.

This was the book that got me hooked on the study of U.S. foreign policy.

I vividly remember debating the grammatical merits of the word “intermestic” with my undergraduate adviser. (Full disclosure: he was a skeptic; I was in favour.) But we both agreed that the term it introduced to describe the connection between the international and domestic dimensions of policy was fundamentally apt.

This remains my go-to book to get up to speed on the domestic politics of any major foreign policy challenge of the Cold War period. And it should be yours, too.

I am sometimes put off by ‘big’ sprawling works of history, that cover hundreds of years in hundreds of pages and may end up sitting on my shelf both goading and embarrassing me for my failure to do them the courtesy of finishing them. (Although admittedly, maybe looking good when people pop around!).

Paul Bew’s engaging examination of over 200 years of Irish history is an exception to this. Written by one of Ireland’s most eminent historians, it manages to combine academic rigor with accessibility (no mean feat). Bew offers a survey of the development and course of conflict in Ireland as well as an analysis of the decisions (and mistakes) made by key leaders along the way.

It covers a period much longer than the years Northern Ireland has existed as a political entity, but I found the analysis helpful in explaining its emergence and development.

I love this book because it covers the same important topic as Friedman’s The World is Flat, but juxtaposes America against the rest of world, and offers the perspective of a geopolitical expert with roots in both the emerging world (India) and the U.S. Zakaria presents an intuitive understanding of the politics, economics, and culture of these vastly different worlds.

In the three years between the 1st and second edition of this book, global developments followed the trajectory he foresaw, only at an even faster pace than he had predicted.

A central message of the book—sustaining a strong America in today’s world cannot be accomplished by hegemonic domination but by embracing international cooperation—has become more pressing than ever.