RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN GREAT POWER POLITICS by Wesley O’Dell A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland July, 2016 © 2016 Wesley O’Dell All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This project identifies a puzzle in how academics and policymakers have described international politics: the phrase ‘Great Power rights and responsibilities’ is widely-used and has been for centuries, but there exists no widely-shared understanding of what this term means, what it signifies theoretically about the casual relationships among states, and even from where the concepts underlying it historically came. It then posits answers to these questions, identifying these origins in the practices of feudal Europe and tracing their development into a complex of Great Power rights and responsibilities as feudal order gave way to an early modern states-system. Though formally anarchical, this system was actually ordered by a sophisticated social arrangement of Great Power relationships based on mutually-comprehensible rights and duties expressed through a shared identity as well as a number of differentiated roles unique to individual Powers. The material abilities of its Powers were understood in light of their moral commitments to their peers, to the political community around them, and to their own self-understandings. These encouraged certain behaviors, discouraged others, and kept European international activity rooted in a shared political culture. The project then examines how, over time, this arrangement was institutionalized to the point that the internal identity of a Great Power became a reified social status, while the roles of rights and duties expressed by the individual Powers came to exert legitimatized ordering authority across regions and issue areas. However, the behavioral routines and cognitive patterns of the complex did not evolve as the moral and material contexts of the 19th century went through their own profound transformations. This incongruity made an upheaval event possible as the system crowded itself out: more Powers meant more roles ii expressing more authority claims of rights and duties, and this would necessarily multiply areas of tension and points of potential conflict in a system with greater violence potential than ever before. This project concludes by demonstrating how periodic moments of role overlap between pairs of Powers led to the July Crisis of 1914 and, ultimately, to the shattering of the right- and responsibility-complex that fostered its necessary conditions. Readers: Reneé Marlin-Bennett Nikolas Jabko Daniel Deudney Mary Favret Ronald Walters iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am fortunate to have many people in many different communities to thank for their contributions to this dissertation as well as for their support and encouragement. At Washington & Lee University, I was taught by a remarkable group of people whose commitment to inspiring undergraduates through scholarship was matched only by their fundamental decency and surpassed only by their rigorous standards. Professor Mark Rush deserves special mention for his encouragement of my work and for the many remarkable opportunities for scholarly growth he has provided me over the years. The men and women of the George C. Marshall Foundation also deserve recognition as special patrons of my undergraduate scholarship, especially my supervisor on Volume Six of the Marshall Papers Project, the late Sharon Ritenour Stevens. At the University of Cambridge, I was privileged to learn from Professor Christopher Clark (St Catharine’s), whose teaching influenced how I think about international affairs to a degree I have only come to appreciate years later. Professor Antony Lentin (Wolfson) and his wife Monica have also been tremendous friends and supporters; if I someday display half the erudition, half the eloquence, and half the graciousness of Professor Lentin, the scholar and the man, I will count myself lucky. At The Johns Hopkins University, I am particularly thankful for Dr. Jared Hickman, who provided me with one of the most engaging intellectual experiences of my life, took an interest in my ideas, and encouraged me to refine them in what eventually became my first peer-reviewed article. Similarly, I will always be grateful to Professor Siba Grovogui for introducing me to so many new ways of thinking about the world in his many seminars, as well as for the way he valued and respected my contributions. To iv my dissertation committee, you have my sincere thanks for your guidance and your willingness to engage with my work. To my supervisor, Professor Reneé Marlin-Bennett, I am truly humbled by your gracious assistance with this project. Finally, I wish to recognize the friends and family that have so generously shared my life over these challenging years. Mes sieurs Richard S. Cleary Jr., Scott G. Centorino, and J. Zak Ritchie have been stalwart friends as well as gentlemen whom I respect and admire. Special mention must be made of Dr. Stephen Mann and his wife Priscilla, whose kindness and generosity have followed me by some quirk of fate since I made Stephen’s chance acquaintance as an undergraduate. They welcomed me into their hearts and home during my studies at Cambridge, and they have since done the same for my wife and our friends and relatives. I cherish their friendship, and will always think of them as family. To my parents, Jodie and Rayna, I owe thanks for everything that I have, everything that I will have, and all that is good in me. No words can properly credit them for helping me to become who I am, for supporting me unconditionally through good times and bad, and for being my first, and most significant, teachers. Most of all, I am grateful for my wife, Natalie. She has suffered and endured more than I can know for my sake. Her strength and courage inspire me, her love and support nourish me, and it is the vision of my future with her that makes straight my way. I dedicate these pages to her. v TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables . vii List of Figures . viii I. Introduction . 1 II. Feudal Rights and Duties in the Early International System . 32 III. Rights and Duties in International Society . 80 IV. Progress Without Change: Rising Powers in the Nineteenth Century . 140 V. Success, Anxiety, and Crisis . 174 VI. Conclusion . 234 Appendix I: Glossary . 254 Appendix II: Chronology . 256 Bibliography . 263 Curriculum Vitae . 275 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Great Powers in Three Eras Table 3.2: Shared Rights and Duties, 1648-1789 Table 3.3: Categories and Functions of Right- and Duty-claims vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: Ideal-typical Distribution of Emphasis among IR Paradigms Figure 1.2: Anarchy, Semi-archy, and Hierarchy Figure 1.3: The Production of Right- and Responsibility-based Great Power Politics Figure 2.1: Three Developmental Tracks of Rights and Duties Figure 3.1: The Formation of Great Power identity Figure 3.2: Genealogy of Great Power Identity Right- and Duty-claims, 1648-1813 Figure 3.3: Developmental Typology of Right- and Duty-claims Figure 3.4: Components of a Great Power Role Figure 4.1: The Vienna Concretization Figure 5.1: Great Power Role Dyads in 1914 viii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. - Jesus of Nazareth No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go with the rights. During the seven and a half years that I was President . [the United States] never failed to treat both strong and weak with courtesy and justice; and against the weak when they misbehaved we were slower to assert our rights than we were against the strong. My endeavor [in international affairs] was not only to assert these rights, but frankly and fully to acknowledge the duties that went with the rights. -Theodore Roosevelt We have tried to emphasize that because of China’s extraordinary development over the last two decades, that with expanding power and prosperity also comes increased responsibilities. - Barack Obama1 Capacity, right, and responsibility are frequently spoken of as though they are linked together in the organization of social and political life. However, the diversity of the discourse surrounding them conceals an often-unrecognized diversity of meaning. This is the problem academic international relations (IR) faces when it turns to how these concepts manifest themselves in world politics: a veneer of rhetorical similarity conceals real dissonance in how they are understood. Though these concepts are seemingly familiar, there is a actually counterintuitive absence of sustained, rigorous theorizing about them as a tripartite topic. To offer a remedy, this study will develop a conceptual framework within which material capacity, right, and responsibility are understood as an interwoven unity shaping world politics: a complex of ‘Great Power rights and responsibilities’. 1 Luke 12:48 (King James Version); Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 502, 505; Remarks Prior to a Meeting With Vice President Xi Jinping of China, Daily Comp. Pres. Docs. 201200097 (February 14, 2012). 1 The following six chapters will disentangle the many conceptual and historical components surrounding these concepts. This introduction explores the strengths and weaknesses of existing scholarship, articulating a new understanding of the right- and responsibility-complex as a key point of material-moral juncture influencing international norms and mediating international anarchy. Subsequent chapters each examine a discrete historical and conceptual facet of how this came to be. Chapter Two explores the theory linking together capacity, right, and duty within international politics, tracing the antecedents of the complex to feudal norms. Chapter Three examines the sociology of a ‘textbook’ Great Power system in the 18th century, exposing the macro-level operation of the identity and role mechanisms that demarcated its attitudes and determined its characteristic behaviors.