Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP F riday, August 30, 2013, the day the feckless Barack Obama brought to a premature end America’s reign as the world’s sole indispensable…

Outstanding case made for "consrrvative" realist IR position of off-shore balancing - not really "conservative" but he needs to give it that spin for his aufience buy-in -- takes on not just the militarists, neicons and librral intrrventionists but thr "non-liberal" sbtu-interventionists like Kennan and Buchanan - he leaves out the corrosive, anti-liberal democracy effects of globalized, financial capitalism that undermines the narrative of gradualist liberal democratization and achievements in OECD rconomies - as Zingales putscit "save capitalism from the capitalists" beeds to be included with the hegemon's responsibilities along with off-shore balancing - dimensions of power beyond military, which Dan does stress in his sketch of ehy Britain could meet the military challenges until WWI

L’objectif de la guerre est de faire la paix rappelle Jean-Pierre Bois, professeur émérite d’histoire moderne. Loin d’une histoire des différents congrès diplomatiques qui ont ponctué le XIXe siècle, l’historien propose de situer ce qu’on appelle "Le concert des nations", expression passée dans le langage courant au XIXe siècle dans un champ historique plus large. -- L’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, à l’initiative de l’académicien Jean Baechler, a organisé un colloque international sur le Thème de la Guerre et de la société. Une vingtaine de participants se sont réunis autour du thème spécifique, cette année, de « la Guerre et de la politique », le premier volet d’une démarche scientifique interdisciplinaire qui durera trois ans.-- la retransmission de la communication de Jean-Pierre Bois, Professeur à l’Université de Nantes..--Jean-Pierre Bois est professeur émérite d'histoire moderne du Centre de Recherches en Histoire Internationale Atlantique (CRHIA. Il a reçu en 2012 le prix Drouyn de Lhuys pour son ouvrage La Paix, histoire politique et militaire.

Extending Mannheim approach to thinking about different worldviews that organize thought, priorities, values and action - liberal universalism and global capitalism have a similar view of space, where boundaries of communities and especially of nation-states are ignored, porous or viewed as frictions to overcome

Extending Mannheim approach to thinking about different worldviews that organize thought, priorities, values and action - liberal universalism and global capitalism have a similar view of space, where boundaries of communities and especially of nation-states are ignored, porous or viewed as frictions to overcome

Extending Mannheim approach to thinking about different worldviews that organize thought, priorities, values and action - liberal universalism and global capitalism have a similar view of space, where boundaries of communities and especially of nation-states are ignored, porous or viewed as frictions to overcome

Citation:Ghervas, Stella. 2014. “La paix par le droit, ciment de la civilisation en Europe? La perspective du siècle des Lumières,” in "Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle: Commerce, Civilisation, Empire", ed. Antoine Lilti and Céline Spector (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation), pp. 47-69. -- bookmarked and downloaded pdf to Note

This book presents an important new account of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Closed Commercial State, a major early nineteenth-century development of Rousseau and Kant's political thought. Isaac Nakhimovsky shows how Fichte reformulated Rousseau's constitutional politics and radicalized the economic implications of Kant's social contract theory with his defense of the right to work. Nakhimovsky argues that Fichte's sequel to Rousseau and Kant's writings on perpetual peace represents a pivotal moment in the intellectual history of the pacification of the West. Fichte claimed that Europe could not transform itself into a peaceful federation of constitutional republics unless economic life could be disentangled from the competitive dynamics of relations between states, and he asserted that this disentanglement required transitioning to a planned and largely self-sufficient national economy, made possible by a radical monetary policy. Fichte's ideas have resurfaced with nearly every crisis of globalization from the Napoleonic wars to the present, and his book remains a uniquely systematic and complete discussion of what John Maynard Keynes later termed "national self-sufficiency." Fichte's provocative contribution to the social contract tradition reminds us, Nakhimovsky concludes, that the combination of a liberal theory of the state with an open economy and international system is a much more contingent and precarious outcome than many recent theorists have tended to assume. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Frederick Neuhouser, Barnard College -- Isaac Nakhimovsky has accomplished what I had thought to be impossible: he has made Fichte's The Closed Commercial State (1800) into an interesting text. By carefully situating this long-neglected work within its historical and philosophical context, Nakhimovsky enables us to see it as more than a misguided attempt by a major philosopher to address the political issues of his day by inventing a utopian vision of the free republic so obviously fantastic that it was widely dismissed as such by most of Fichte's own contemporaries. To his credit, Nakhimovsky does not deny the silliness of many of the details of that vision. What he shows, however, is the urgency -- and, more importantly, the continuing relevance -- of the central problem that Fichte's text attempts to solve: how to reconcile a Rousseauean ideal of free citizenship with the realities of modern "commercial" societies (marked, in Fichte's time, by a decline in agriculture in favor of industry and a rapidly increasing division of labor). Since the principal conflict here is the threat posed by international trade relations to the freedom and economic well-being of the citizens of republics enmeshed in those relations, it is not difficult (with Nakhimovsky's assistance) to see this seemingly most untimely of texts as addressing what is merely an earlier version of the same conflict that stands, even today, at the center of Europe's woes. One of the great strengths of Nakhimovsky's book is that it treats The Closed Commercial State as standing in a long line of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts that debate the implications for international peace of what we would call "globalized" commerce. (Kant's Perpetual Peace [1795] is the best known of these texts, it merely continues a much longer tradition that includes works by Fenélon, l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, Sieyès, and many others.) -- downloaded as pdf to Note

...a recent examination by Sean McFate, a former Army paratrooper who later served in Africa working for Dyncorp International and is now an associate professor at the National Defense University, suggests that the Pentagon’s dependence on contractors to help wage its wars has unleashed a new era of warfare in which a multitude of freshly founded private military companies are meeting the demand of an exploding global market for conflict. “Now that the United States has opened the Pandora’s Box of mercenarianism,” McFate writes in The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order, “private warriors of all stripes are coming out of the shadows to engage in for-profit warfare.” It is a menacing thought. McFate said this coincides with what he and others have called a current shift from global dominance by nation-state power to a “polycentric” environment in which state authority competes with transnational corporations, global governing bodies, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), regional and ethnic interests, and terror organizations in the chess game of international relations. New access to professional private arms, McFate further argues, has cut into the traditional states’ monopoly on force, and hastened the dawn of this new era. McFate calls it neomedievalism, the “non-state-centric and multipolar world order characterized by overlapping authorities and allegiances.” States will not disappear, “but they will matter less than they did a century ago.” - copied to Pocket

Maria Fusaro presents a new perspective on the onset of Venetian decline. Examining the significant commercial relationship between England and Venice in the period 1450–1700, Fusaro demonstrates how Venice's social, political and economic circumstances shaped the English mercantile community in unique ways. By focusing on the commercial interaction between them, she also re-establishes the analysis of the maritime political economy as an essential constituent of the Venetian state political economy. This challenging interpretation of some classic issues of early modern history will be of profound interest to economic, social and legal historians and provides a stimulating addition to current debates in imperial history, especially on the economic relationship between different empires and the socio-economic interaction between 'rulers and ruled'. **--* "For the first time Maria Fusaro gives us the English among the creeks and islands of the Venetian empire, as seen by the Venetians themselves. Using archives hitherto little-known or wholly unknown, she paints a lively picture of Anglo-Venetian commerce, diplomacy and war." Nicholas Rodger, University of Oxford **--** Introduction: political economies of empire *-* 1. The medieval background *-* 2. The reversal of the balance *-* 3. The Ottoman Levant *-* 4. Genoa, Venice and Livorno (a tale of three cities) *-* 5. Trade, violence and diplomacy *-* 6. Diplomacy, trade and religion *-* 7. The Venetian peculiarities *-* 8. The English mercantile community in Venice *-* 9. The English and other mercantile communities *-* 10. The goods of the trade *-* 11. Empires and governance in the Mediterranean *-* 12. Coda and conclusions -- marketing materials not yet available for download

Historians of ideas have traditionally discussed the significance of the French Revolution through the prism of several major interpretations, including the commentaries of Burke, Tocqueville and Marx. This book argues that the Scottish Enlightenment offered an alternative and equally powerful interpretative framework for the Revolution, which focused on the transformation of the polite, civilised moeurs that had defined the 'modernity' analysed by Hume and Smith in the 18thC. The Scots observed what they understood as a military- and democracy-led transformation of European modern morals and concluded that the real historical significance of the Revolution lay in the transformation of warfare, national feelings and relations between states, war and commerce that characterised the post-revolutionary international order. This book recovers the Scottish philosophers' powerful discussion of the nature of post-revolutionary modernity and shows that it is essential to our understanding of 19thC political thought. **--** Part I. The Burke–Paine Debate and Scotland's Science of Man: 1. The Burke–Paine debate and the Scottish Enlightenment *-* 2. The heritage of Hume and Smith: Scotland's science of man and politics **--** Part II. The 1790s: 3. Scotland's political debate *-* 4. James Mackintosh and Scottish philosophical history *-* 5. John Millar and the Scottish discussion on war, modern sociability and national sentiment *-* 6. Adam Ferguson on democracy and empire **--** Part III. 1802–15: 7. The French Revolution and the Edinburgh Review *-* 8. Commerce, war and empire

Brief summary of thesis defended 2005, l'Université Paris I Sorbonne - surprise, surprise, Lucien Bély on his committee with the notion of the 18thC as the last stage of the société des princes and the French Revolution forcing the end of the dynastic wars -- though focus is on the period of the Directoire and Napoleon up through Amiens, he places it in the context of the European dynastic system as structured by the Peace of Utrecht -- highlights an interdisciplinary approach -- downloaded pdf to Note

States over the past 500 years have become the dominant institutions throughout the world, exercising vast and varied authority over the economic well-being, health, welfare, and very lives of their citizens. This concise and engaging book explains how power became centralized in states at the expense of the myriad of other polities that had battled one another over previous millennia. Richard Lachmann traces the contested and historically contingent struggles by which subjects began to see themselves as citizens of nations and came to associate their interests and identities with states. He explains why the civil rights and benefits they achieved, and the taxes and military service they in turn rendered to their nations, varied so much. Looking forward, Lachmann examines the future in store for states: will they gain or lose strength as they are buffeted by globalization, terrorism, economic crisis, and environmental disaster? This stimulating book offers a comprehensive evaluation of the social science literature that addresses these issues, and situates the state at the center of the world history of capitalism, nationalism, and democracy. It will be essential reading for scholars and students across the social and political sciences. -- reviews all the main theoretical approaches to rise of the nation-state, state-building, and various speculations on the demise or transformation of the state in the era of globalization and transnational actors and issues. -- looks extremely helpful, if for nothing than the lit review and bibliography

Introduction: "Globalization" and the Nation-State in the Modern World-System (pp. 253-258) - Denis O'Hearn and Thomas M. Wilson. *--* Nationalism in a Post-Hegemonic Era (pp. 259-283) - Richard Lachmann. *--* The State of States in International Organizations: From the WHO to the Global Fund (pp. 285-310) - Nitsan Chorev, Tatiana Andia Rey and David Ciplet. *--* On the Study of Social Optics: Foucault, Counter-Surveillance, and the Political Underground in Northern Peru (pp. 311-331) - David Nugent -- lots of interesting bibliography

Downloaded pdf to Note

Highlights love-in between Abe and Abbott and new "special relation" -- looks more dangerous re exacerbating young Chinese nationalists than the modest constitutional changes being proposed. Good links

Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 240 -- This Article offers a new way to understand the enforcement of domestic and international law that we call “outcasting.” Unlike the distinctive method that modern states use to enforce their law, outcasting is nonviolent: it does not rely on bureaucratic organizations, such as police or militia, that employ physical force to maintain order. Instead, outcasting involves denying the disobedient the benefits of social cooperation and membership. Law enforcement through outcasting in domestic law can be found throughout history - from medieval Iceland and classic canon law to modern-day public law. And it is ubiquitous in modern international law, from the World Trade Organization to the Universal Postal Union to the Montreal Protocol. Across radically different subject areas, international legal institutions use others (usually states) to enforce their rules and typically deploy outcasting rather than physical force. Seeing outcasting as a form of law enforcement not only helps us recognize that the traditional critique of international law - that it is not enforced and is therefore both ineffective and not real law - is based on a limited and inaccurate understanding of law enforcement. It also allows us to understand more fully when and how international law matters. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 98 -- Keywords: international law, treaties, World Trade Organization, Enforcement, jurisprudence

NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 11-29 -- Lecture 1 begins from a specifically Christian point of view, though it also addresses the difficulties of sustaining a viewpoint of this kind in a multi-faith and indeed increasingly secular world. Lecture 2 considers nationhood, sovereignty, and the basis for the division of the world into separate political communities. A religious approach to international order will endorse the position of most modern international jurists that sovereign independence is not to be made into an idol or a fetish, and that the tasks of order and peace in the world are not to be conceived as optional for sovereigns. But sovereigns also have their own mission, ordering particular communities of men and women. Lecture 3 considers the rival claims of natural law and positivism regarding sources of international law. The most telling part of natural law jurisprudence from Aquinas to Finnis has always been its insistence on the specific human need for positive law. This holds true in the international realm as much as in any realm of human order - perhaps more so, because law has to do its work unsupported by the overwhelming power of a particular state. Lecture 3 addresses, from a religious point of view, the sources of law in the international realm: treaty, convention, custom, precedent, and jurisprudence. It will focus particularly on the sanctification of treaties. -- No of Pages : 73 -- Keywords: customary international law, international law, ius cogens, nationalism, natural law, positivism, public reason, religion, self-determination, sovereignty, treaties -- downloaded pdf to Note

NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 13-32 -- This paper examines and criticizes the suggestion that we should interpret the “human” in “human rights” as (i) referring to the appropriate sort of action when certain rights are violated rather than (ii) the (human) universality of certain rights. It considers first a crude version of (i) — the view that human rights are rights in response to whose violation we are prepared to countenance humanitarian intervention; then it considers more cautious and sophisticated versions of (i). It is argued that all versions of (i) distract us with side issues in our thinking about human rights, and sell short both the individualism of rights and the continuity that there is supposed to be between human rights and rights in national law. The paper does not deny that there are difficulties with views of type (ii). But it denies that the positing of views of type (i) gives us reason to abandon the enterprise of trying to sort these difficulties out. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 22 -- Keywords: Charles Beitz, John Rawls, Joseph Raz, human rights, humanitarian intervention, rights, sovereignty, universalism

NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 13-56 This paper evaluates and criticizes the account of international law given in Chapter Ten of H.L.A. Hart's book, The Concept of Law. Hart's account offers a few insights -- particularly on the relation between law and sanctions. But his account of international law is moistly quite impoverished. His observations about the absence of secondary rules (rules of change, adjudication, and recognition ) in international law are quite unjustified. His exaggeration of the difference between international law and municipal legal systems is so grotesquely exaggerated, as to deprive the former account of almost all its utility in jurisprudence. What is worse, his dismissive and misconceived account of international law has tended to drive practitioners of analytic legal philosophy away form addressing this important area of jurisprudence. -- Number of Pages in PDF File: 17 -- Keywords: gnereal jurisprudence, Hart, international law, primitive legal system, rule of recognition, sanctions, secondary rules, treaties -- downloaded pdf to Note

NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 12-27 -- “The State of Nature,” said John Locke, “has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one.” But what is “a law of nature”? How would we tell, in a state of nature, that there was a natural law as opposed to something else...? What form should we expect natural law to take in our apprehension of it? This paper argues three things. (a) John Finnis’s work on natural law provides no answer to these questions; his “theory of natural law” is really just a theory of the necessary basis in ethics for evaluating positive law. (b) We need an answer to the question “What is natural law like” not just to evaluate the work of state-of-nature theorists like Locke, but also to explore the possibility that natural law might once have played the role now played by positive international law in regulating relations between sovereigns. And (c), an affirmative account of what natural law is like must pay attention to (1) its deontic character; (2) its enforceability; (3) the ancillary principles that have to be associated with its main normative requirements if it is to be operate as a system of law; (4) its separability ...from ethics and morality, even from objective ethics and morality; and (5) the shared recognition on earth of its presence in the world. Some of these points — especially 3, 4, and 5 — sound like characteristics of positive law. But the paper argues that they are necessary nevertheless if it is going to be plausible to say that natural law has ever operated (or does still operate) as law in the world. -- Number of Pages: 21 -- downloaded pdf to Note

Hugo Grotius, The Free Sea, trans. Richard Hakluyt, with William Welwod’s Critiuqe and Grotius’s Reply, ed. David Armitage (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004). 07/14/2014. <http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/859> -- Grotius’s influential argument in favor of freedom of navigation, trade, and fishing in Richard Hakluyt’s translation. The book also contains William Welwod’s critque and Grotius’s reply to Welwod. -- downloaded pdf to Note

The IMF recently endorsed capital controls as useful policy responses to certain circumstances. This column explains the logic and the research that underpins the shift

Abstracts of papers presented at the Harvard conference, organized by David Armitage, on the 200th anniversary of the Congress of Vienna

Armitage, David. In Press. “Shaking the Foundations: A Reply to My Critics”. Contemporary Political Theory. -- downloaded pdf to Note

Address by the Honorable Louise Arbour, President & CEO of the International Crisis Group, on the occasion of the Inaugural Roland Berger Lecture on Human Rights and Human Dignity, 17 February 2014, Oxford. -- The UDHR, in other words, remains largely aspirational. Its commitments are ultimately hostage to the competing principle of state sovereignty which places on states, almost exclusively, the responsibility for the wellbeing of their citizens, and to the weak institutional structures designed to promote and protect human rights at regional and international levels. -- I would like to examine today how modern doctrines – in particular international criminal justice, the responsibility to protect and the rule of law – have contributed to the advancement of lasting peace, and how to make it more likely that they might do so in the future.

Recent concern with the institutional underpinning of the international financial architecture has intersected with broader debates concerning the possibility of achieving an adequate deliberative context for decisions involving transnational economic governance. Scholars working within traditions associated with international political economy, deliberative democracy, cosmopolitanism and critical theory have informed this broader debate. This article uses this debate to ask whether the structure of financial governance at the global level exhibits the necessary conditions to support deliberative democracy. In particular, it considers the extent to which publicness and a public sphere have become part of the broader structure of financial governance. Although in some ways financial governance is a hard case for this debate, an argument can be made that a public sphere has emerged as an important element of the international financial architecture. At the same time, the analysis of the role of the public sphere in financial governance reveals important lessons which public sphere theorists and deliberative democracy advocates need to consider in order to extend their analysis into the realm of global political economy. -- paywall

JSTOR: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 60, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 471-510 -- downloaded pdf to Note -- huge bibliography

JSTOR: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 617-634 -- downloaded pdf to Note

JSTOR: The Historical Journal, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 2005), pp. 65-100 -- downloaded pdf to Note Burke's justification for intervention in French internal affairs in the name of the international community has formed a powerful strand of thought in both diplomacy and international relations theory. However, the strength and openness of Burke's advocacy, traced here, changed according to his target audience, the domestic, and the international political context. Crucially, when he came to justify the case openly, the arguments changed completely. Beginning with a Grotian argument drawn from Vattel and premised on states as isolated rights-holders in a pro-social' state of nature', Burke always struggled to draw a justification for intervention in the case, allowed by Vattel, of irrevocable political disunion. This conflicted both with Burke's general conception of states as corporate wholes and his linked policy aspiration to restore the totality of French ancient institutions. Ultimately abandoning this, his final argument, fully set out only in the Letters on a regicide peace, is completely new. It is premised not on modern international law but on remedies to be found in Roman domestic law, invocation of which he justifies by claiming Europe to be a single juridical enclave, drawing on an eighteenth-century discourse of shared manners, law, and culture as constitutive of political identity and community.

JSTOR: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (June 2010), pp. 449-480 -- The constructivist authors John Gerard Ruggie, Friedrich Kratochwil, and Nicholas Onuf have each independently pressed the case that the concept of state sovereignty owes its genesis to the rediscovery of the Roman law of private property in the Renaissance. This article supports this conclusion, but argues that it was the notion of representation that Roman property law bequeathed which was of such significance. It makes this argument through analyses of the writings of Hobbes (on the temporally permanent state), Montesquieu (on the territorially bounded state), and Sieves (on the nation-state). It thus provides a fresh account of the rise of the nation-state within the framework of a powerful series of analyses of sovereignty that have been posited by scholars in the discipline of International Relations.

Political Research Quarterly March 2013 vol. 66 no. 1, 3-17 -- Andrea Radasanu - Political Science Department, Northern Illinois University, 417 Zulauf Hall, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA. Email: aradasanu@niu.edu - Published online before print January 20, 2012, doi: 10.1177/1065912911431246 -- Montesquieu peace ancient republicanism empire confederate republic -- Montesquieu famously claims that modernity ushered in gentle mores and peaceful relations among countries. Consulting Montesquieu’s teaching on Greek foreign policy, both republican and imperial, elucidates the character of these peaceful mores. Montesquieu weaves a modernization tale from primitive ancient Greece to modern commercial states, all to teach the reader to overcome any lingering attachment to glory and to adopt the rational standards of national interest and self-preservation. This account provides important insights on the relationship between realism and idealism in Montesquieu’s international relations teaching and helps scholars to rethink how these categories are construed.

JSTOR: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 187-222 -- downloaded pdf to Note

In 1716, the French diplomat and author Francois de CalliËres published the treatise "De la Maniere de negocier avec les souverains" an outstandingly successful manual of advice for diplomats, perhaps the best of its kind ever written. It has become the classic text, highly regarded by 18th century statesmen, who considered it essential reading for prospective diplomats, and by modern historians who have praised its insights into the conventions and techniques that remained a distinctive feature of European statecraft for almost 300 years.This book is the first, complete critical edition of Callieres' work based on an accurate but virtually unknown English translation of 1716. It also includes a biographical introduction, based on French manuscript sources, which provides an account of Callieres' life as writer and diplomat, a discussion of the origin of the work and an assessment of the intellectual and historical background to which the treatise belongs. In addition, the book includes appendixes on the French political academy, Callieres' library and a list of his publications as well as those of his father, Jacques, also a notable author in his day. The volume concludes with a bibliography of works on diplomatic theory covering the period 1648 to 1815.This reprint of the 1983 edition by Leicester University Press makes available once again this historical work of enduring value.

JSTOR: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Sep., 1980), pp. 452-476 -- downloaded pdf to Note

JSTOR: Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Apr., 1944), pp. 292-302 -- analogies between 17thC England and France and 20thC entre deux guerres

In 2000, the author published a book declaring the end of human rights which, not surprisingly, stirred up considerable controversy among the ranks of human rights advocates. One went so far as to call it repugnant. Douzinas neither adopts a pragmatic limitation on rights nor makes the type of simplistic attacks on rights associated with the American Critical Legal Studies movement of the 1980's. To the contrary, Douzinas passionately desires rights. He believes, however, that human-rights talk, as it has developed, is itself part of the problem. Being both intellectually vacuous and philosophically incoherent, it serves as a tool for rationalizing the exercise of power. Consequently, Douzinas is trying to save rights from human rights. This is an impassioned but rigorous philosophical exploration of what rights might mean in a post-modern, post-9/11 world.

Downloaded pdf to Note

The decision to pull back on massive engagements of military force does not mean force is not going to be used. It just goes underground. In fact, I would argue that today, the U.S. military is way, way out in front in setting the terms for future U.S. global engagement, and in ways that may not suit our national interests.

When the military (especially the ground forces) fail, the military does not shrink, sulking back into the barracks. Arguably, today the U.S. military is more involved than ever overseas, on a global basis, carrying out missions that extend well beyond classic military competencies.

Very useful discussion of cross-cutting interests of various players in sovereign debt restructuring, default and impact of Argentina in 2nd Circuit
A "sovereign bankruptcy" result via US courts and equitable relief?
- downloaded recent IMF report on sovereign restructuring policies

Grenada’s Taiwan trouble merited a solitary footnote in the IMF’s recent review of sovereign restructuring policy. But if even half of the stuff below survives into later legal argument or a ruling — the official sector will need to pay much more attention here.

Why care about all this judgment debt foreshadowing? Two reasons. First, there’s the potential cost to sovereigns if it is easier to enforce judgment debt by ‘reactivating’ the pari passu clause.

For Argentina, it could mean that billions of dollars follow the $1.3bn it has been told to pay holdouts. 

For other sovereigns, the cost of restructuring debt could be higher. They could have to pay off holdouts who would otherwise be quite willing to ‘reduce’ their claims to judgment. There is the ‘greater leverage’ the IMF generally worries about holdouts winning after the Argentina case, but judgment debt might make it greater still. And while we say costs to sovereigns, these could realistically be borne through lower recoveries for restructured creditors.

Intuitively then, you might expect any restructured bondholder to greet a post-judgment pari passu claimant like the plague. It’s like cats and dogs. Intuitively.

Of course, despite all that, the second thing is that ratable payment perhaps logically demands that judgment creditors can grab a piece of the pie going to pre-judgment ones. After all, it’s ratable, and equitable. Isn’t it?

I don’t have a strong sense of the degree that other scholars associate me with the “new hierarchy studies,” but a major theme of my work is that we are better off understanding crticial aspects of international relations as structured by patterns of super- and subordination than as anarchical. Indeed, my sense is that two of the most prominent advocates of this view–Krasner andLake–overestimate the importance of anarchical relations in world politics. Still, both correctly note that de jure state sovereignty serves to deflect attention from the prevalence of hierarchical control among and across states.

International Organization, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 551-574
She dates it from early 1970s

NATO is like a bicycle that has only ever been ridden by the United States, with the Europeans bundled behind in the baby seat. Now the United States is urging the Europeans to learn to ride the bicycle themselves. The European response has been that they prefer to design their own, rather different, bicycle. It is smaller, slower, and fitted with large training wheels. It is useful for the sorts of missions CSDP has undertaken, but simply inadequate for serious crisis-management tasks. The Europeans need, sooner or later, to master the adult bike.