#Day of defeat source realism series

Back in 1977, Professor Stanely Hoffman had stigmatized IR as an American Social Science as he famously put it, ‘the discipline of international relations was born and raised in America which had profound consequences for thinking and theorizing’ (Hoffman, 1977, p. In this way Eurocentrism underpins both classical, as well as neo-realism given their normative and explanatory framework being grounded within a parochial analysis of West wherein intra-Western politics is presented as world politics. Consequently, the IR theory in general and the dominant realist paradigm in particular argues Osiander, developed against the background of the ideology of sovereignty (Osiander, 2001).

The ‘Westphalian Myth’ as labeled by Andreas Osiander, linking the emergence of the Westphalian model to the Peace of Westphalia is largely based on the 19th and 20th-century fixation on the concept of state sovereignty. According to Hobson, the focus of realism is what he calls the “Westphalian big bang” of 1648, which assumes that the international system exploded in Europe as the result of the peace of Westphalia (Hobson, 2012, p. Being the dominant theory of the discipline, Realism is quintessential a Eurocentric theory as international politics is conflated with the politics of intra-Western relations so much so that reference to the non-Western world is all but absent. So instead of elucidating international politics in an objective, positivist, and universalist manner, international relations theory rather celebrates and promotes the West parochially as the highest or ideal normative referent in world politics. The subsequent knowledge system develops into intellectual colonialism or the coloniality of knowledge which postcolonial thinkers define as an ‘epistemic violence committed at the ‘encounter’ with the ‘other’ and leading to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos refers to as ‘epistemicide’ (Fonseca, 2019, p. This is a deliberately designed choreography to explicitly and implicitly place Europe as the origin and originator of all developments, which are considered to be central to the development of international relations. Eurocentrism as a knowledge system gets re-articulated through the spatio-temporal binaries by locating ‘Europe’ as a space separate from the ‘non-West’ and always ahead within the story of the progressive narrative of the international. In this way, the notion of Eurocentrism does not simply refer to a geographical question but articulates a much deeper one-the epistemic question.

#Day of defeat source realism series

For him, in a very precise manner, the international theory essentially constructs a series of Eurocentric conceptions of world politics (Hobson, 2012, p. John Hobson even traces back this process to the mid-18th century and argues, thereafter the international theory that developed both inside and outside of the discipline has mostly been a Eurocentric construct. For the dissident scholarship ever since its beginning as a discipline, IR has reproduced itself by either silencing or confiscating knowledge production at the margins of the ‘self’, that is, by articulating and re-articulating the coloniality of knowledge (Quijano, 2000 Mignolo ( 2011)). International Relations (IR) especially with the post-positivist turn has been subjected to serious scholarly discontent for being a parochial discipline. Thus Kautilya apart from being a non-Western begetter of the realist tradition offers a reliable understanding of India’s regional diplomacy in the subcontinent. However, the rise of Modi had revitalized the dynamic of Arthashastra by openly and boldly embracing Kautilya as vividly underscored by his ‘Neighborhood First’ diplomacy in South Asia. Nevertheless, its application varied across leadership. In fact, Kautilya’s realism is there in the DNA of India’s strategic culture and has been the default strategy for South Asia as India still perceives the region through the historical sub-continental prism. Therefore, his Arthasastran realism offers an indigenous theoretical toolkit to examine India’s strategic culture. The subject matter of Arthashastra precisely earns him the title of ‘first great political realist’ because much of the bedrock assumptions of realism that Europe came to know very late, Kautilya had in ancient India grasped them. Kautilya’s text serves as a potent non-Western theoretical and conceptual reservoir to engage with and thereby to interrogate the Eurocentric realist tradition. The article is a modest attempt to deparochialize Eurocentrism embedded within the discipline of International Relations by examining Kautilya and his Arthashastra.