While dominant International Relations (IR) theory has constructed the concept of security in such a way that excludes economic sanctions from considerations of violence, the track record of embargo tells a different story, one with a significantly higher death toll. This project challenges the borders of the hegemonic IR discourse to make room for a theoretical and political account of the deadly impacts of sanction regimes. Through a discourse analysis of IR theory, using Laclau and Mouffe’s holistic discourse theory, it looks to the spaces of meaning negotiation emerging from feminist IR theory. The renegotiated concepts of human security and structural violence make visible economic sanctions as acts of violence, and displace the binary oppositions of international/domestic, military/economic, public/private which shield embargo from the sight of its own violence. Having broken embargo out of its conceptually locked box, this project pushes further, and interrogates the connections of embargo and empire. Embargo functions to uphold imperial control and Western interests, while (re)producing racist colonial narratives. While deconstructing and reconstructing three competing understandings of embargo – embargo-as-nonviolent, embargo-as-violence, and embargo-as-imperial – I interrogate the political implications of hegemonic ways of knowing. I argue that, by challenging the hegemony of IR, we can unmask the practice of embargo, and locate its violent role in upholding imperial structures of power. / Graduate

This thesis is an original contribution to critical international relations theory. Responding to Hartmut Behr's call for the development of more universalistic trajectories of ontological inquiry for contemporary (global) politics and ethics, our original contribution is to establish a 'critical' approach to international theory on a more universalistic meta-theoretical foundation. Proceeding from a philosophical analysis of 'ontological' foundations in influential normative, meta-theoretical, and critical approaches to international theory, we argue for a shift from international theory’s reliance on a shallow ontology of 'things that exist' to a fuller ontology of being, and of human being in particular. After identifying with the left-Hegelian tradition of thought, and establishing that the most compelling and promising advocate of a 'critical' approach to international theory, that of Andrew Linklater, rests on a limited conception of human existence and a thin understanding of human freedom, we explore the implications of conceptions of human being and freedom in the work of Martin Heidegger and Georg W. F. Hegel for critical international theory. Offering an epistemological defence of our universalism through Hegel's phenomenological constructivist approach to knowledge, then demonstrating how this allows us to transcend the schism between foundationalist and anti-foundationalist approaches to normative theory, we premise our own emancipatory cosmopolitanism on a commitment to the human being conceived as 'singularity' rather than subject. Proceeding from a discussion of 'what it means to be' a free human being according to Heidegger and Hegel, we then foreground two aspects of human freedom that have hitherto been obscured in critical international theory and develop a praxeological emancipatory cosmopolitanism on this basis. Rather than rejecting Linklater's emancipatory cosmopolitanism, we call for its 'overcoming,' and demonstrate ways that our meta-theoretical argument can effect international practice by offering 'love' as a guide for ethical and emancipatory praxis and an evaluative tool for critical social theory.

[pt] O objetivo da dissertação é analisar criticamente o uso do conceito do Antropoceno pela linha crítica de teoria das Relações Internacionais. Isso se faz com um foco específico na origem do conceito em Ciência do Sistema Terrestre (CST), e através de uma discussão geral sobre autoridade científica atribuída à ciência moderna e suas conexões com práticas de world-making, entendidas especificamente como cosmologias científicas, e em relação com mobilização de propostas na política internacional. Nesse sentido, a discussão explora a construção de CST e propõe a formulação do Antropoceno como relacionada com os comprometimentos políticos dessa disciplina – a partir daí, sugere-se o uso da problematização Foucaultiana como forma de análise das soluções políticas ao Antropoceno propostas pela disciplina. A seguir, a dissertação conecta as Ciências do Sistema Terrestre com outros momentos de desenvolvimento da ciência moderna com o âmbito de mover uma discussão geral sobre o poder de uma autoridade científica legitimar formas de política internacional através de práticas de world-making. Com isso, a discussão expande em dois mundos e formulações de política internacional possíveis advindos de distintas interpretações do Antropoceno. Finalmente, no que se refere à literatura de Relações Internacionais, a dissertação avalia como a apropriação do conceito de Antropoceno a partir de CST é realizada, prestando atenção especificamente na chamada por uma mudança na ontologia da disciplina e na relação entendida como desejável entre teoria e prática política presente na literatura, ambos elementos associados à CST. Por último, a noção de problematização é retomada para se analisar as soluções políticas e intelectuais propostas pela literatura Crítica de Relações Internacionais em sua mobilização do Antropoceno. / [en] This dissertation attempts to critically analyze the mobilization of the concept of the Anthropocene by Critical International Relations literature. It does so with a particular focus on the origins of the concept within Earth System Sciences (ESS), and within a more general discussion over the scientific authority of modern science and its connections to practices of world-making - discussed specifically in terms of scientific cosmologies - and propositions over international politics. As such, the discussion explores the construction of ESS and the formulation of the Anthropocene as related to the political commitments of the discipline and proposes the use of the Foucauldian problematization to analyze the political solutions stemming from the discipline. Then, the dissertation connects Earth System Sciences to other scientific endeavors, in a different historical context in order to move a more generalized discussion on the power of scientific authority to inform international politics through world-making practices. With that, the discussion lays out two possible worlds and political implications stemming from interpretations of the Anthropocene. Finally, within IR literature the dissertation assesses how the appropriation of the Anthropocene is conducted, paying particular attention to the call for an ontological shift within the discipline and to the specific relationship between theory and political action present in the literature, both elements connected to ESS. At last, the notion of problematization is brought back in order to analyze the intellectual and political solutions brought forth by Critical IR in their mobilization of the Anthropocene.

This thesis argues that the Australian military intervention in East Timor in 1999 was motivated primarily by the need to defend Australia’s own strategic interests. It was an act of Australian imperialism understood from a Marxist perspective, and was consistent with longstanding strategic policy in the region.¶ Australian policy makers have long been concerned about the security threat posed by a small and weak neighbouring state in the territory of East Timor. This led to the deployment of Australian troops to the territory in World War Two. In 1974 Australia supported Indonesia’s invasion of the territory in order to prevent it from becoming a strategic liability in the context of Cold War geopolitics. But, as an indirect result of the Asian financial crisis, by September 1999 the Indonesian government’s control over the territory had become untenable. Indonesia’s political upheaval also raised the spectre of the ‘Balkanisation’ of the Indonesian archipelago, and East Timor thus became the focal point for Australian fears about an ‘arc of instability’ that arose in this period.¶ Australia’s insertion of military forces into East Timor in 1999 served its own strategic priorities by ensuring an orderly transfer of sovereignty took place, avoiding a destabilising power vacuum as the country transitioned to independence. It also guaranteed that Australia’s economic and strategic interests in the new nation could not be ignored by the United Nations or the East Timorese themselves. There are therefore underlying consistencies in Australia’s policy on East Timor stretching back several decades. Despite changing contexts, and hence radically different policy responses, Australia acted throughout this time to prevent political and strategic instability in East Timor.¶ In addition, the intervention reinforced Australia’s standing as a major power in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific. The 1999 deployment therefore helped facilitate a string of subsequent Australian interventions in Pacific island nations, both by providing a model for action and by building a public consensus in favour of the use of military intervention as a policy tool.¶ This interpretation of events challenges the consensus among existing academic accounts. Australia’s support of Indonesia’s invasion and occupation of East Timor from 1974 was frequently criticised as favouring realpolitik over ethical considerations. But the 1999 intervention, which ostensibly ended severe violence and secured national independence for the territory, drew widespread support, both from the public and academic commentators. It has generally been seen as a break with previous Australian policy, and as driven by political forces outside the normal foreign policy process. Moreover, it has been almost universally regarded as a triumph for moral conduct in international affairs, and even as a redemptive moment for the Australian national conscience. Viewing the intervention as part of the longstanding strategy of Australian imperialism casts doubt on such positive evaluations.