Romancing Westphalia: Westphalian IR and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, L.H.M. LING

Abstract

We need to re-envision international relations IR . By framing world politics as a world-ofworlds comprised of multiple, interactive and overlapping regional worlds, we can curb the hegemony of the West through Westphalian IR and stem, if not transform, the “cartographic anxieties” that still beset postcolonial states. Both of these provoke state violence externally and internally. This paper examines an East Asian regional world inflected by the 14th-century Chinese epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Noting its conflicts as well as compatibilities with Westphalian IR, I conclude with the implications of this thought experiment for IR and for world politics in general

Keywords

• Regional worlds, hegemony, conflict and compatibility, Westphalian IR, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

References

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9. Qing China suffered defeat and unequal treaties; imperial Japan, atomic devastation; and Nehru’s India, Cold War power politics.
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