From an everyday, non-theoretical perspective, we seem to take for granted that state actors often insist that other states respect the community they represent, while suing for recognition with corresponding measures. In everyday discussion, we readily agree that the behaviour of Palestine's political leaders, for instance, cannot be understood without taking into account the striving for recognition; that Russia's government has been going to great lengths to compel Western countries to show more consideration for Russian interests; or that during the administration of George W. Bush, Western European governments used diplomatic relationships and manoeuvres to obtain renewed respect from their American ally.1 At first sight, these applications of the category of recognition to international relations certainly do not seem surprising. After all, one of the more important motives behind the recent revival of Hegel's theory of recognition was the desire to return to a stronger moral vocabulary in analysing the comportment of collective agents and social groups, thereby extracting this behaviour from the dominant paradigm of purely purposive-rational, strategic action.2
But already in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel objected to applying the notion of a ‘struggle for recognition’ to international relations, at least in the case of ‘civilized nations’. Instead, he sought to describe international relations in terms of the self-assertion of nation-states within the framework of universally accepted international law. He reserved the idea of a striving for recognition and respect for more underdeveloped and unrecognized nations, which have been unsuccessful in their efforts to attain honour and glory; meanwhile, the enlightened constitutional states of the West are solely guided by the aims of maximizing welfare and maintaining national security.3 That is the image that the dominant theory of international relations has adopted over the last few decades. Without making any reference to Hegel, the theory maintains that from the moment of their internationally recognized independence, national governments essentially aim to assert themselves as nation-states and are thus mostly uninterested in matters of international respect and recognition. A significant gap therefore seems to lie between our everyday intuitions and the dominant theory, one that appears difficult to overcome. While in our more theoretical explanations of state comportment we accept that state activity is to be interpreted exclusively in terms of purposive rationality, our everyday intuitions also account for quasi-moral motifs such as a striving for recognition and violations of respect.
These intuitions, however, generally do not stand up to scientific models. The idea that state actors and governments are exclusively interested in collective self-assertion has so much suggestive power that we quickly abandon our everyday intuitions in favour of the standard scheme of purely material motives. From this perspective, what we once assumed to be acts fuelled by a feeling of being disrespected, or by a desire for recognition, now represents a merely symbolically concealed act motivated by national interest. The question this raises is, in the first instance, purely empirical and descriptive: is the dominant paradigm of purposive-rational behaviour an adequate model for explaining political tensions, conflicts and wars? From the perspective of our everyday intuitions, we would instead have to ask whether we need to consider more primary (originär) motives, such as the desire for recognition and respect, in order to explain foreign policy in general and international hostilities in particular. The answer to these questions has opaque normative implications that cannot be left out of the picture, for the more our explanations of international relations emphasize individual states' striving for recognition, the more it appears we will have to concede that states do not disregard the political reactions of their counterparts, and therefore have a latent awareness of the fact that their collective identity must be internationally acceptable. Even if this shift in our perspective cannot yield any immediate guidelines for action, it does strongly suggest that we should prefer ‘soft power’ to military force or ‘hard power’ in international conflicts.4 The explanatory framework we choose therefore has a strong bearing on our prescriptions for how states should act in the case of international tensions, disagreements or conflicts. Depending on whether we emphasize the aspect of national self-assertion or the striving for international recognition, the normative horizon of our prescriptions will change accordingly.
In what follows, I will make some tentative, exploratory efforts to answer these questions. First, I explain why we should pay more attention to the dimension of recognition in international relations. This concerns the purely descriptive categorial means that are appropriate for describing international conflict and tensions (I). Second, I will touch on some of the normative consequences of this proposed paradigmatic shift in how we understand and explain international relations. Because of my lacking familiarity with the issue, I will have to restrict myself to some tentative considerations, which should nevertheless make apparent that by emphasizing the dimension of recognition in international relations, our moral perspective on world politics would be changed significantly (II).
The main difficulty we face in applying the category of recognition to international relations is revealed by the obstacles we run into on our search for an appropriate theoretical vocabulary. As soon as we try to give a name to the dimension of respect involved in state conduct, we find that the only terms at our disposal are too psychologically or intellectually laden. We speak, slightly awkwardly, of a striving for recognition or a need for respect, even though we know that such psychological concepts do not appropriately capture the issue at hand. As long as we only transfer the concept of recognition from the interpersonal level to the behaviour of social groups or movements, we do not seem to have any terminological problems. In this case, we view the collective identity of a given community as the higher-level equivalent of personal identity or relation-to-self. We therefore have a relatively clear picture about what is being fought over when individuals or groups engage in a struggle for recognition. Hence there has never been any problem with the notion of a ‘politics of recognition’ when it comes to the struggles of minorities for legal respect and social recognition for their collective identity. The starting point of these struggles consists in shared experiences of exclusion, indignity or disrespect, which motivates the members of such a group to band together and fight in solidarity for legal or cultural recognition.5
But such a conceptual transfer is much more difficult, and the conceptual problems much broader, once we switch from the level of group struggles to relationships between nation-states. Here we can no longer speak of collective identity, particularly because the obvious increase in ethnic and cultural subgroups has started to dispel permanently the illusion of a nationally homogeneous population. Even where, for historical reasons, the idea of the nation-state has been able to gain a toehold, the state apparatus cannot be viewed as the executive organ of a collective identity, because the tasks it carries out – providing for security, preserving power and ensuring economic coordination – obey their own set of rules (eigengesetzlich). Not only do the tasks of government change their form in accordance with various overall forms of political organization, but the manner in which they are described also changes according to the theory we employ. Depending on whether the function of the liberal-democratic state is regarded as consisting in the ‘biopolitical’ management of the population or in creating conditions of social justice compatible with the requirements of national security, we will find great differences in the description of the tasks of government. But even beyond differences pertaining to the form of government or the theoretical system of description, it remains true that the foreign-political function of the state cannot merely be viewed as a compliant agency charged with giving articulation to collective identity. Rather, the state is subject to forces and imperatives that derive from the tasks of preserving the borders, promoting economic well-being and maintaining political security. Therefore, we cannot simply transfer the concept of recognition and claim that wherever collective identities exist, there must also be a struggle for recognition. In the first instance, the functional imperatives of political control (Steuerung) and the preservation of power intervene between, on the one hand, the supposed need of a people to have their own, however fragmented, identity respected by foreign nation-states and, on the other hand, the actions of state actors. The psychological concepts we use when we speak of ‘strivings’, ‘needs’ and ‘feelings’ are thus inappropriate for describing international relations. State actors do not have mental attitudes, but represent authorities charged with carrying out politically determined tasks.
Now, on a theoretical level, there is a concept of ‘recognition’ that is applied to international relations as a matter of course. According to the statutes of international law, a politically organized community only comes into legal existence by virtue of being recognized by other internationally ‘recognized’ states. A major task of foreign policy thus consists in examining whether a certain community which regards itself as a state actually meets the generally defined prerequisites of a ‘state’.6 Hans Kelsen maintains that this act of legal recognition is a necessarily reciprocal act, because a newly recognized state can only be viewed as a full-fledged member of the international community if it recognizes the states that offer it recognition in turn. As long as a state fails to return the recognition extended to it, the birth of a state within the international community will remain incomplete, because that state will not yet have proven its competence as a member of the legal community of states.7
At the same time, however, Kelsen emphasizes that in acts of recognition between states, a government only officially takes note of or cognizes an empirical reality, rather than conveying its respect for that state. If a state recognizes another political community within the framework of international law, this only means that the recognizing state regards the recognized state as having fulfilled the conditions of statehood. This type of recognition, therefore, is not normative, but instead expresses a state's cognition of a given state of affairs: ‘The legal act of recognition is the establishment of a fact; it is not the expression of a will. It is cognition rather than re-cognition.’8 In order to speak of ‘recognition’ between states in the true sense of the term, Kelsen claims that there must be a certain amount of room for decision. This would not involve examining a fait accompli in order to perhaps draw the conclusion that a state deserves recognition; rather, a decision would have to be made as to whether more intense and friendly relations should be taken up. According to Kelsen, it is only at this second stage that we can justifiably speak of an act of recognition between states. This would refer not to the consequence of a state's cognition of an empirical fact, but to a government's free decision to enter into a positive relationship with another state. Kelsen terms these acts of recognition ‘political’ in order to emphasize their specificity. With a political act of recognition, a government expresses its intention to treat another state as an equal member of the international community. Even if Kelsen primarily focuses on the establishment of diplomatic relations and trade agreements, his conceptual proposal provides us with a key to pursuing the above-mentioned institutions on a theoretical level. Obviously, what we mean when we speak of recognition between states, of disrespect and indignity, lies on the same level that Kelsen has in mind when he speaks of ‘political’ acts of recognition.9
The first step we would have to take in order to get a better grasp of the issue consists in emphasizing the sources of legitimacy that bind the conduct of state actors. The latter cannot pursue foreign political objectives without considering whether the manner in which they do so conforms to the presumed expectations of the population. The manner in which a government defends the nation's security, political clout and economic prosperity must be made dependent upon the consent of the nation's citizens, if only to demonstrate the government's operational capacity. The necessity of legitimacy in foreign policy even holds true for non-democratic political systems. Even in authoritarian states or dictatorships, such as Iran or China, rulers and political elites are usually aware that their authority is wholly dependent on the degree to which the public consents to their actions. We can assume that the citizens of a state, regardless of the cultural, ethnic or religious differences that might divide them, are very keen on seeing their country accorded due respect and honour by other countries. The political representatives of other communities are to ‘recognize’ that upon which a community founds its self-image – the challenges it has overcome in the past, its power to resist authoritarian tendencies, its cultural achievements, and so on.10 We must not make the mistake of immediately equating such desires with nationalism or feelings of supremacy. This is not only because the collective identity of a state-organized community can no longer found itself on historical or ethnic commonalities,11 and not only because the processes of cultural globalization run counter to any such will to supremacy. Rather, the desire for international recognition of that which makes up a nation's self-respect is fundamentally directed towards the involvement, and not the exclusion, of other states. Mundane examples for such desires can be found in the often bemusing excitement that can envelop an entire population as soon as its team brings home a victory in an international sport event, or in the naïve pride with which a country's citizens attempt to draw the attention of visitors to cultural productions that honour the community's past. That is neither nationalism nor even patriotic love of the constitution (Verfassungspatriotismus), because it neither demonizes other peoples nor necessarily praises one's own democratic constitution. Instead, this represents a striving for a form of collective recognition, without which a collective identity could not be maintained in an unequivocal and unbroken fashion.
It is this kind of collective expectation on the part of a country's population that a state's political agents must respect in their foreign policies. In order to legitimate their own actions, they understand that they will have to appropriately display those features of their country that deserve recognition while carrying out their functionally defined tasks. Therefore, the collective striving for recognition is not just one particular function within the overall spectrum of a state's tasks; rather, it colours and underlies the way in which political agents fulfil the tasks assigned to them by the nation's constitution.
In order to understand the alternatives open to state actors in this context, we need to take another step in our analysis. We need to get a clear picture of the symbolic horizon of meaning that necessarily encompasses the entirety of state conduct. Political measures and actions have a whole series of meanings beyond their expressly formulated content, communicated through the manner of their implementation. This involves the use of certain easily understood metaphors, historical rituals, even the conscious manipulation of facial expressions and gestures at summits and other political events. These are all tools in the arsenal of symbols with which state actors can intentionally communicate messages that go beyond the ‘official’ content of their communiqués.12 Presumably, much of what Kelsen terms ‘political recognition’ goes on in the symbolic staging of foreign policy. Statements intended to raise awareness for the collective identity of one's own country, or to express respect for the achievements of another country's population, are not normally an explicit part of a given political transaction, but are contained in the manner in which these transactions are concluded and presented. Of course, there will always be cases in which government representatives believe they are acting in accordance with the political mood of their home country when they explicitly express a certain measure of recognition for the culture of another nation's population. A striking example is President Obama's astounding speech at Cairo University in June 2009 before a large number of political and intellectual representatives of the Islamic world. From greeting the audience in Arabic to his repeated mentions of the cultural achievements of Islam, his entire speech sought to remove the impression of disdain in many Arab countries during the Bush years. But much less common are instances in which a political actor explicitly demands respect for the collective identity of his or her own nation's population. The desire to maintain the appearance that one's own nation is unaffected by another nation's opinions, the aim of avoiding public embarrassment, and the etiquette of diplomatic encounters – all that usually prevents a people's desire for recognition of its collective identity from being directly and openly expressed by its political representatives. This recognitional dimension of international relations is thus typically expressed indirectly and symbolically. Behaviour that serves to express a state's interest in self-assertion is staged so as to implicitly convey a finely calculated game in which respect and disrespect, desires for recognition and experiences of humiliation find expression.
Therefore, distinguishing a strategic dimension of self-assertion from a normative dimension of recognition is problematic. In their transactions with other states, political actors do not initially pursue purely purposive-rational aims such as preserving power and maximizing welfare, in order to subsequently grant or revoke recognition. Rather, states always define their interests within a horizon of normative expectations they presume their citizens to have in the form of diffuse desires for the recognition of their own collective identity or that of another collective. Therefore, it is wrong to initially assume a primary, isolated layer of purely strategic intentions and calculations. State actors cannot formulate such interests without considering the needs for recognition they can presume on the part of the fragile collective that is their own population, as well as the needs for moral reparations harboured by an equally porous foreign population. Because political representatives must preserve legitimacy by acting as interpreters of the experiences and desires of their own respective citizenry, all encounters and relationships between states stand under the moral pressure generated by a conflict over recognition. Issues of this kind – the need for an appropriate self-image in the eyes of the world, the defence against the shame of collective humiliation, and the desire to make reparations for unjust deeds – determine the execution of foreign policy to a degree that makes analytical differentiation impossible.
All this, however, relates solely to the descriptive level of the analysis of international relations. When it comes to explaining international relations, it is unwise to assume a certain bundle of interests that refer exclusively to a state's desire for self-assertion, in order to then subsequently add a diffuse ‘need’ for recognition. Rather, state actors define what they regard as necessary for the preservation of the country they represent in line with how they interpret the desires for recognition held by the citizenry. Naturally, rulers or state representatives have a certain amount of leeway in interpreting the smouldering, diverse and barely organized sentiments of the population in one direction or another: that is, in emphasizing either the conciliatory or the hostile elements of the public mood. Only in democratic states, in which the constitution itself is a principles-based interpretation of the nation-state's identity, are rulers compelled to obey certain guidelines while fulfilling the collective striving for recognition. But in no state can political actors simply ignore the population's demands on its collective identity, because this would mean risking the loyalty of the population. Therefore, when political agents interpret and execute the functions accorded to them, they must always consider the expectations of their citizens about the conduct of other states. Authors who, like Hegel, refuse to accept such a connection between foreign policy and collective strivings for identity in the case of civilized states do not have a clear grasp on the significance of the need to secure legitimacy. They believe instead that in explaining international relations, they can ignore moral demands emerging from collective identities, because they refuse to recognize that even modern, functionally differentiated states depend on the consent of the citizens.
If we look for illustrative examples in the recent past, we will find a number of both positive and negative cases. At the negative end of the spectrum, we would find National Socialism's policy of territorial expansion, which cannot be explained without reference to widespread feelings of collective humiliation among the German population owing to the Treaty of Versailles. These feelings even found their way into the definition of external enemies. In this case, it is almost impossible to examine Nazi foreign policy without referring to the successful attempt to take diffuse feelings among the population and concentrate them upon a feeling of national humiliation post-Versailles, thereby creating a justification for an aggressive policy of reparations and revenge.13 At the other, positive, end of the spectrum, we could cite an example from the very recent past: the new American president's efforts at reconciliation with the rest of the world. We cannot explain these efforts adequately without seeing them as an attempt to overcome a widespread feeling of isolation and shame among the American population. Certainly, both examples are extreme cases of politically mediatized struggles for recognition. In the first case, political rulers formed a narrative of justification on the basis of a diffuse mood among the citizens, which allowed the rulers to engage in a campaign of conquest and revenge. In the second case, a democratically elected president with impressive rhetorical skills has interpreted the paralysing malaise of the majority in a way that allows him to justify reconciliatory gestures towards currently hostile governments. Both examples, as distinct as they might be, clearly illustrate that we cannot divorce a nation's foreign policy aims from the respective demands of the nation's collective identity. The manner in which states react to each other, and the kinds of relations they maintain with each other, derive from a fusion of interests and values brought about by both sides. This fusion consists in the disclosure of foreign policy goals from the perspective of the hypothetical community that joins together a population – interpreted as a collective that is striving for recognition. Therefore, psychological terminology has a place after all – not as an element of our theoretical language, but as one of the objects of that language in political reality. And within that reality, state actors must interpret the population's moods, making use of concepts related both to strivings for recognition and to historical humiliation.
At the same time, the moral spectrum illustrated by these two examples clearly demonstrates just how many directions the political mobilization of collective sentiments can take. The desire to have one's own collective identity be recognized by other peoples can be used to legitimize both an aggressive policy of conquest and a de-escalating policy of reconciliation. This raises questions that are no longer merely descriptive, but touch on the normative dimension of a theory of international relations.
In my opinion, we cannot further differentiate the type of recognition that plays a constitutive role in the dynamics of international relations. Unlike social groups or movements, whose own statements can be used to draw conclusions about the specific type of collectively desired recognition, national collectives are far too amorphous for us to be able to make comparable differentiations. Instead, we must content ourselves with the relatively vague assumption that the members of a nation-state generally have a diffuse interest in having their collective self-respect be respected by other states, and in receiving recognition for their common culture and history. Differentiations between various modes of recognition, such as are made in the realm of intersubjective relations,14 seem inappropriate for entire populations. It is almost impossible to tell whether such populations are striving for signs of goodwill, legal equality or esteem in the eyes of the other side, because their individual members' motives are too diffuse, and because their aims are insufficiently integrated. In any case, such differentiations play a very marginal role when it comes to explaining international relations. What is decisive is not the type of recognition for which a certain population ‘actually’ strives, but how political actors and rulers interpret its respective moods. The sense of a collective ‘We’ among the population, which will always have an influence on the definition of foreign policy objectives, is not an empirical but a hypothetical quantity. It arises when disordered and presumed expectations and moods are formed into a collective narrative that makes a certain type of international stance appear justified in the light of past humiliations or desired recognition.15
Such narratives of justification give us a key to answering the normative questions that arise when it comes to shaping international relations.16 After all, the shape of international relations determines the opportunities for changing these relations so as to reduce military conflict and improve prospects for peaceful cooperation. As soon as we turn away from the descriptive problems of a theory of international relations and turn towards the normative problems these relations entail, we must adopt a different perspective on actual conflicts in the world. We then ask no longer how to properly understand conflicts between states, but which measures would have to be taken in order to make such conflicts less likely, and to raise the chances for more peaceful international relations. This second category of questions, however, cannot be wholly separated from the first, because only an appropriate understanding of the causes of international conflict can enable us to envision solutions for overcoming the current state of affairs. The ‘realism’ of our normative considerations and utopias17 will increase relative to the correctness of our hypotheses about the considerations that underlie how state actors and governments plan and calculate their relations with other states. The theoretical assumptions I developed in the first section of the essay play a key role at the juncture between empirical facticity and normative considerations. If it is true that states can only define their international relations with the help of narratives of justification that contain a credible and convincing interpretation of the population's interests in collective self-respect, then ‘political’ relations of recognition at the international level indirectly take on decisive importance as soon as we seek to reduce conflicts between states.
This basic normative idea results from the close connection between collective feelings, on the one hand, and political narratives of justification, on the other. State actors can only disclose and define foreign policy aims by viewing their citizens' elementary desires for security and prosperity in the light of interpretations that constitute a narrative synthesis of the diffuse expectations of the population. At the same time, very narrow limits are imposed on these interpretations, because a summarizing construction of collective feelings must prove to be a halfway appropriate and convincing interpretation of the citizenry's actual, if diffuse, expectations. Narratives intended to justify a hostile and aggressive foreign policy can remain intact only as long as the population has grounds for feeling that its collective self-respect has been violated or insulted by the conduct of other states. If there is no evidence for such disrespect, feelings of humiliation and degradation will not be able to spread among the fragmented public spheres in which citizens move, and the narratives in play will fast lose credibility and thus become incapable of playing this legitimizing role. What is true in the case of aggressive foreign policy can also apply to a policy of willing cooperation and reconciliation. A narrative interpretation that supports such conduct can only be upheld as long as the feeling of having one's own collective self-respect be disrespected by other states does not gain the upper hand. In both cases, the collective feelings of a population that follows the signals of other states with interest and suspicion will prove to be the decisive measure for the success of foreign-political narratives of justification. The greater the distance between the diffuse moods among the citizenry and the official justifications for political conduct, the more difficult it will be for state actors to maintain their foreign policy objectives. Therefore, perhaps we could say that states indirectly codetermine the foreign policy of other states, because the symbolic means with which they convey respect and recognition for other nations constitute an instrument for influencing the formation of public opinion and moods in other countries.
All these considerations have taken us a long way towards answering the normative questions at hand. We saw that the entirety of a state's foreign policy stems from a specific interpretation of interests and values. This interpretation must coordinate the functional requirements for maximizing security and prosperity with the public's expectations about other states' recognition of its own collective identity. For that reason, state actors or governments must base their conduct on narratives meant to justify, in light of historical events and episodes, pursuing the state's interests in an either cooperative or aggressive manner. At the same time, however, we saw that states also exercise an indirect influence on how other states legitimize their foreign policies, because they can influence the formation of public opinion and mood from abroad. The diverse tools used to signal recognition or disrespect constitute a means for casting doubt upon other states' narratives of justification by demonstrating a divergent view of those states' collective identity. These measures drive a wedge between the self-justifications of state actors and the political will-formation of the population; by means of credible expressions of respect and recognition, they attempt to convince another citizenry to mistrust its government's narratives of justification. Although the history of international relations is brimming with examples of such behaviour, they play a very marginal role in the theory. Because the latter interprets state activity largely as purposive-rational behaviour, it lacks the conceptual framework for according the affective dimension of international relations of recognition its proper place. On the normative level, this comes back to haunt the theory in the shape of a procedural lack of imagination about the chances for reducing hostile conflict and expanding relations of peaceful cooperation. The theory instead restricts itself to compromises and agreements under international law, even though the history of international conflict teaches us that collective feelings of recognition or humiliation by other states play a much more significant role.
The path for civilizing international relations lies primarily in sustained efforts at conveying respect and esteem for the collective identity of other countries. Even before legal agreements aimed at promoting peace can do their work, and even before the cultivation of diplomatic relations and economic agreements can reduce international tensions, we need publicly visible signals that the history and culture of other nations are worth being heard among the cacophony of the world's peoples. Only by means of such recognition, which goes over the heads of government representatives and political agents, can we ensure that the citizens of another state no longer believe the demonization practised by political elites, and that they can begin to trust that the other side respects them. The history of international relations contains enough examples to prove that a violation of this normative principle only raises the danger of international conflict, while demonstrable respect for this principle has reduced the potential for such conflicts. Willy Brandt's famous ‘Warschauer Kniefall’, his act of kneeling before the monument to the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was an internationally perceptible gesture that made it nearly impossible for the Polish government to revive formerly prevalent prejudice and resentment about the Federal Republic of Germany.18 Europe's (and especially Germany's) ignoring of the harsh and determined struggle of the Serbs against the Nazis prepared the way for a fatal policy of overly hasty international recognition of individual ex-Yugoslavian states (Croatia, Kosovo), which drove Serbia's government into increasing isolation and thereby ultimately strengthened ultra-nationalistic narratives among the Serbian public.19 The lack of sympathy, and perhaps even a total absence of solidarity, on the part of internationally dominant states for the demeaning situation of the Palestinian population continues to fuel a situation in which the local ruling elites' fantasy of taking revenge on Israel finds collective support among the lower, impoverished classes.20
We could easily extend this list of examples. We might think of the constant stream of new members joining Islamist terrorist organizations over recent years in order to get a sense of the effects of a policy that fails to extend recognition to other peoples, an act of recognition that would go over the heads of state authorities. The first step towards reconciliation between states, towards developing peaceful and cooperative relations, will always consist in using the soft power of respect and esteem, which signals to a foreign citizenry that its cultural achievements are in no way inferior, and that it can count on others' sympathy for its sufferings. The more explicitly we demonstrate such recognition, the more visible these demonstrations will be to other peoples, and the more we can cast doubt on demonizations serving to justify hostile reactions. The best means a state has at its disposal for counteracting demonization and resentment on the part of other nation-states consists in globally visible and clear signals of willingness to include other citizenries in the international moral community.
Certainly, such symbols of political recognition are not enough to create a solid basis for international cooperation. We need to follow up on efforts to overcome rejectionist attitudes arising from experiences of collective humiliation, to undermine historically grounded and yet long-exploited demonizations, by taking steps towards contractual agreements that secure peaceful relations and long-term arrangements on how to coordinate efforts to meet common challenges. On the basis of that cooperation, more stable networks of transnational communities can arise,21 such as we might find in the process of European integration.22 But before such a decentring of state politics can take place, different citizenries must have the experience of recognizing each other's cultural productions and historical achievements, both of which make up the conditions of their collective self-respect. A political theory that fails to gain conceptual access to these affective roots of transnational confidence-building will also be unable to appropriately conceive of the normative conditions for civilizing world politics. Therefore, it is time that we view international relations in a new light – one that differs from the view of Hegel and the political realists following in his wake.