100 years of Chatham House: Top ten articles from the 2010s
Editorial Team
In our final look back at the history of the journal, this month we look at our top ten articles from the 2010s. In the decade that saw the centenary of the First World War, International Affairs published extensively on the war’s legacy and its implications for how we understand international relations today. Beyond this, the journal placed additional focus on the need for global leadership to address climate change, the ongoing erosion of US power in the international system and the changing role of institutions in international politics.
1) Rachel Briggs on community engagement and counterterrorism
Rachel Briggs is a security analyst, academic and former director of Hostage UK, where she led the organization’s work supporting people returning after being taken as hostages and their families. As a policy academic, Briggs specializes in security, counterterrorism and countering violent extremism. In this capacity she has held numerous senior positions including as head of International Strategy and the Identity Program at Demos. She is currently director for research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
In July 2010 Briggs wrote in International Affairs on UK counterterrorism.
From the article:
It is not good enough for government to talk about the importance of open and trusted partnership and then hide decisions about funding behind complex bureaucracies, such that it takes a Freedom of Information request to reveal them.
2) Lavanya Rajamani on climate change and environmental law
Lavanya Rajamani is a legal scholar specialising in environmental law and the politics of climate change. Throughout her career, Rajamani has worked on the international climate change regime, focusing on climate negotiations in international institutions. In this capacity she has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, acted as a legal advisor to the UN Climate Secretariat and negotiated on behalf of the Alliance for Small Island States. She is currently a professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford.
In 2012 Rajamani wrote in International Affairs on the politics of development in climate change negotiations.
From the article:
For developing countries with serious energy poverty and developmental challenges, a climate regime built around symmetry will impose severe limitations on their ability to lift their people out of poverty or provide universal access to energy. India, in particular, has repeatedly made this point. This will limit these countries’ desire to find common cause with the regime’s central objectives and to bind themselves to its requirements.
3) Raymond Suttner on the history of the African National Congress
Raymond Suttner is a South African activist and academic. During apartheid, Suttner was a vocal opponent of the regime, playing a key role in both the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party. For this he was imprisoned twice and spent a total of 11 years under house arrest. As an academic, Suttner has written on imprisonment under apartheid alongside a range of other topics ranging from jurisprudence to the politics of masculinities and democracy in post-apartheid South Africa. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of South Africa and a visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg.
In 2012 Suttner wrote in International Affairs on the history of the ANC.
From the article:
There is no evidence of strong popular organization coexisting with representative democracy on a sustained basis anywhere. This is worth noting because it was a widespread expectation and continues to be part of ANC discourse.
4) Robert Cooper on Britain’s relationship with Europe
Robert Cooper is a British diplomat, policymaker and political advisor. As a diplomat, From 1987–1993 Cooper served as the head of the UK Foreign Office’s policy planning staff, and also spent time as the UK’s Special Representative to Afghanistan. In 2002 Cooper began working for the European Union as Director-General for External Political-Military Affairs, and was a special advisor to the European Commission on Myanmar from 2013–2014. Across both roles Cooper helped to develop European security policy and since leaving the organization he has been an active contributor to the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2012 Cooper wrote in International Affairs on the UK’s relationship with Europe.
From the article:
There is no doubt that Britain would count less if it were not a member of the Union. But there is also no doubt now that there will be further treaties. For my part, I believe it is profoundly in Britain’s interest that it remains an active, committed member of the EU.
5) Margaret Macmillan on the legacy of the First World War
Margaret Macmillan is a historian whose work focuses primarily on international military and imperial history. Over the course of her career Macmillan has wrote on a range of topics from the roles of British women in India during British rule to the First World War and Canada’s international relations. She has taught at a number of universities across the world and has worked extensively with the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, serving on their national board of directors. She is currently professor of history at the University of Toronto and emeritus professor of international history at the University of Oxford.
In 2014 at the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, Macmillan wrote in International Affairs on the war’s legacies and parallels with contemporary international relations.
From the article:
The parallels between 1914 and 2014, while not exact — they never are in history — are unsettling. We too live in a time of rapid globalization; we have, still, a faith in progress and the ability of science and reason to solve problems, from the depletion of our natural resources to the sudden fluctuations in the economy; and we too think that large-scale war is impossible.
6) Rama Mani on challenges to the future of global governance
Rama Mani is a performance artist, poet and expert on international security. Mani is a founder of the Theatre of Transformation Academy, an NGO focused on championing and supporting the creative power of humanity to shape its shared future. Mani is also a co-founder of Rising Women Rising World, an organization designed to empower women from around the world to pioneer the future together. As an academic, Mani was director of the Global Peace and Security course at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and is the convenor of the Enacting Global Transformation initiative at the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies. In 2013 she received the Peter Becker peace prize for her contributions to scholarship and peace activism.
In 2015 she wrote in International Affairs on the future of global governance.
From the article:
The dangers of making the wrong choices or, worse, no choices at all are much greater today. Given the dire urgency of our global predicament, it is necessary to sidestep the aversion to utopianism, and consider as a realistic twenty-first-century pathway out of dystopia what I call, playfully yet soberly, Ourtopia.
7) Ramesh Thakur on the responsibility to protect
Ramesh Thakur is an academic and policymaker specializing in peacekeeping and nuclear non-proliferation. Thakur was a key author of Kofi Annan’s 2001 report establishing the responsibility to protect as a principle within the UN system. Thakur also served as Assistant-Secretary General of the United Nations from 1998–2007. As an academic, Thakur has written extensively on the responsibility to protect, the UN system and nuclear non-proliferation. He is currently director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the Crawford School, Australian National University.
In 2016 Thakur wrote in International Affairs on the legacy of responsibility to protect, 15 years after he co-authored the UN paper establishing the principle.
From the article:
That said, R2P does not resolve all the dilemmas of how outsiders can provide timely, decisive and effective assistance to all groups in need of protection. It may be deep, but remains so narrow that many areas beyond the four atrocity crimes fall outside its scope.
8) John Ikenberry on the future of the US-led liberal international order
G. John Ikenberry is a key figure in the development of liberal International Relations theory. Over the course of his career, Ikenberry has become a noted expert on the United States’ position in the international system and the role of international institutions in world politics. In particular, Ikenberry has played an important role in conceptualizing the liberal international order. He is currently the Albert G. Millibank professor of international affairs at Princeton University and co-director of Princeton’s Institute for International Security Studies.
In 2018, as part of a special issue which he co-edited, Ikenberry wrote on the future of the liberal international order.
From the article:
Global leadership hinges on state power, but also on the appeal and legitimacy of the ideals and principles that Great Powers embody and project. The appeal and legitimacy of liberal internationalism will depend on the ability of the United States and other states like it to re-establish their ability to function and to find solutions to twenty-first-century problems.
9) Robin Niblett on think tanks in the 21st Century
Robin Niblett CMG is the current director and chief executive of Chatham House. He has written books on a range of subjects specializing in transatlantic international relations and British foreign policy in Europe. Prior to joining Chatham House, Niblett was executive vice-president and chief operating officer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Additionally, he was an advisor to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee from 2015–2017, and has contributed to research summits organized by NATO and the World Economic Forum.
In November of 2018 Niblett wrote in International Affairs on the future of think tanks in the 21st century.
From the article:
Only those think-tank leaders who seek to protect… their intellectual independence and institutional autonomy, and challenge governments, private institutions and publics alike to look beyond their ever-nearer horizons, can justifiably be heirs to the think-tank founders of the last century.
10) Barry Eichengreen on the economic legacy of the treaty of Versailles
Barry Eichengreen is an economist and policy scholar specializing in economic history. Eichengreen is most recognised for his contribution to debates on monetary policy’s role in causing the great depression. Over the course of his career, Eichengreen has worked for a range of organizations including the US National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre of Economic Policy Research and was an advisor to the International Monetary Fund from 1997–98. He is currently the George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee professor of economics and professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Writing in International Affairs on the centenary of the Paris Peace conference, Eichengreen assessed its economic legacy and parallels with contemporary world politics.
From the article:
Nothing shaped by human hands lasts for ever, and this applies just as much to the international economic and financial architecture constructed after the Second World War as to anything else. Circumstances change, undermining the efficacy of inherited institutions and eroding their support. The result of those changes is a twenty-first-century world that increasingly resembles that after the First World War.
We hope you enjoyed this post in our series, ‘100 years of Chatham House’. Every month throughout 2020, the editorial team of International Affairs will be publishing some of the highlights from each decade since the founding of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Read more from the series here.
