T.V. Paul

McGill University | McGill · Department of Political Science

Balance-of-power theory has been challenged as insufficient for explaining state behaviour. Powerful anomalies for the theory exist, especially among states confronting intense rivalry and war. One such anomaly is underbalancing in the Sino-Indian rivalry by the Indian side up until 2017. Today India is still engaged in limited hard balancing, rely...

Even when the forces of deglobalization are present, parallel forces of globalization, staggered and truncated, are at work in the world system.

East Asia offers a fertile ground for applying dominant theoretical perspectives in International Relations and understanding their relevance and limitations. As this region has seen much conflict and cooperation historically and is re-emerging as a key theater of great power competition in the 21st century even when states maintain high levels of...

Scholars have long been writing about the need for global International Relations (IR) in a fast-changing world, recognizing the distinct contributions that NonWestern nation-states, regions, civilizations and cultures have made to international affairs and regional orders. While these efforts are laudable, a number of institutional, epistemologica...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

For decades, globalization and the liberal international order evolved side by side. Recently, however, deglobalizing forces have been on the rise and the liberal international order has come to be increasingly beleaguered. The special issue ‘Deglobalization? The future of the liberal international order’ examines the interconnectedness of globaliz...

Liberalism has been the most successful political ideology during the past two centuries in withstanding challenges and adapting to new environments. The liberal international order, set up after the Second World War and strengthened at the end of the Cold War, is going through a series of crises, propelled by deglobalization pressures, and the ris...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

With the rapid rise of China and the relative decline of the United States, the topic of power transition conflicts is back in popular and scholarly attention. The discipline of International Relations offers much on why violent power transition conflicts occur, yet very few substantive treatments exist on why and how peaceful changes happen in wor...

The rise of “the rest,” especially China, has triggered an inevitable transformation of the so-called liberal international order. Rising powers have started to both challenge and push for the reform of existing multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and to create new ones, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investm...

The post-Cold War international system, dominated by the United States, has been shaken by the relative downturn of the US economy and the simultaneous rise of China. China is rapidly emerging as a serious contender for America's dominance of the Indo-Pacific. What is noticeable is the absence of intense balance of power politics in the form of for...

Balance of power is one of the most discussed and contested theoretical and policy concepts in international relations. It is in fact the bedrock of realism of all varieties, in particular classical and structural, and it is the most significant variable in systemic theories of international stability. The idea of balancing power has been popular s...

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay examines the role of institutional soft balancing in bringing forth peaceful change in international relations. Soft balancing is understood as attempts at restraining a threatening power through institutional delegitimization, as opposed to hard balancing, which...

In this paper we build on Robert Jervis’ concept of strategic triangles, relations between three states where from the point of view of each state the others are pivotal for its security or foreign policy behavior in a given region. We argue that triangles are important in influencing state behavior in the areas of balance of power, deterrence, arm...

This book moves scholarly debates beyond the old question of whether or not international institutions matter in order to examine how they matter, even in a world of power politics. Power politics and international institutions are often studied as two separate domains, but this is in need of rethinking because today most states strategically use i...

This introduction explains the rationale for this special issue of Asian Security. It begins with a short discussion about the relevance and the utility of the term “security dilemma” in international relations. The concept, which emerged during the Cold War, has since been used extensively to describe India-China relations. This special issue atte...

At the end of the Cold War, the United States emerged as the world’s most powerful state, and then used that power to initiate wars against smaller countries in the Middle East and South Asia. According to balance-of-power theory—the bedrock of realism in international relations—other states should have joined together militarily to counterbalance...

As the aspirations of the two rising Asian powers collide, the China-India rivalry is likely to shape twenty-first-century international politics in the region and far beyond. This volume by T.V. Paul and an international group of leading scholars examines whether the rivalry between the two countries that began in the 1950s will intensify or diss...

This article addresses the research question: how have most small states of South Asian region managed to acquire substantial amount of investment from China and India without falling into the strategic orbit of either power? This is an anomaly because most structural theories, in particular neorealism, would expect small states not to have much po...

This introductory paper of the presidential issue examines IR theory's problems and prospects in understanding when and how change happens, especially peaceful transformations in world politics. The ISA 2017 Baltimore conference was aimed at taking an assessment of our understanding of change, its different manifestations as well as implications. T...

Can the accommodation of rising powers in the international system be accomplished peacefully? Prof. Paul, in his recent publication, argued that if the established and status quo powers hold grand strategies which allow for peaceful accommodation, this is feasible. He clarifies the differences between accommodation and appeasement and the value of...

Much of mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship considers war to be a precondition for significant changes at the systemic level. Peaceful change as a subject has received limited attention in Realism, except by E. H. Carr and Robert Gilpin, although several strategies for stability are present in the paradigm. Mechanisms inherent in Li...

Much of mainstream International Relations (IR) scholarship considers war to be a precondition for significant changes at the systemic level. Peaceful change as a subject has received limited attention in Realism, except by E. H. Carr and Robert Gilpin, although several strategies for stability are present in the paradigm. Mechanisms inherent in Li...

Presidential Address on the importance of studying the subject on peaceful change, both at the systemic and regional levels.

As the world enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, far-reaching changes are likely to occur. China, Russia, India, and Brazil, and perhaps others, are likely to emerge as contenders for global leadership roles. War as a system-changing mechanism is unimaginable, given that it would escalate into nuclear conflict and the destruction o...

This article offers a discussion of nuclear doctrines and their significance for war, peace and stability between nuclear-armed states. The cases of India and Pakistan are analysed to show the challenges these states have faced in articulating and implementing a proper nuclear doctrine, and the implications of this for nuclear stability in the regi...

In this article I argue that it is much harder to deter and compel non-nuclear states and terrorist groups through the threat of use of nuclear weapons than proponents of nuclear use contend. A counter-proliferation strategy relying on nuclear threat and preventive war has serious limitations and may well be a source of nuclear proliferation rather...

The reviews of my book The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World by five leading scholars of Pakistan are gratifying, and I appreciate the positive comments they made on the strengths of the book along with the two other books under review. The discussions by the reviewers are both rich and in-depth, and the reviews substantially enhanc...

In recent years, Pakistan has received a fair amount of attention largely from journalists, think tank analysts, and a handful of writers from the scholarly community. After neglecting the paradoxes of this country for several decades, Western scholars have finally started to look at it more seriously. I suspect the reluctance to do hard-nosed anal...

Rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Turkey are increasingly claiming heightened profiles in international politics. Although differing in other respects, rising states have a strong desire for recognition and respect. This pioneering volume on status features contributions that develop propositions on status concerns and illustr...

Rising powers such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and Turkey are increasingly claiming heightened profiles in international politics. Although differing in other respects, rising states have a strong desire for recognition and respect. This pioneering volume on status features contributions that develop propositions on status concerns and illustr...

The rise of India as a state with major power attributes is expected to take place before the third decade of the twenty-first century. As its power capabilities - especially in the economic, military and demographic arenas - have begun to increase, India has started to make a claim for a leadership role in several institutions of global governance...

“Contemporary India's key values and institutions hold great promise for managing multiethnic societies, especially in the developing world.” Seventh in a series on soft power around the world.

China's dramatic rise is occurring in the context of several factors that make outright military or territorial expansion difficult for a rising power. While these factors constrain China from engaging in a European style great power expansion , affected states in Asia and beyond are constrained by several factors in forming outright balance of pow...

Realist Constructivism: Rethinking International Relations Theory, BarkinJ. Samuel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 194. - Volume 44 Issue 4 - T.V. Paul

Regional transformation has emerged as a major topic of research during the past few decades, much of it seeking to understand how a region changes into a zone of conflict or cooperation and how and why some regions remain in perpetual conflict. Although the leading theoretical paradigms of international relations have something to say about region...

Regional transformation has emerged as a major topic of research during the past few decades, much of it seeking to understand how a region changes into a zone of conflict or cooperation and how and why some regions remain in perpetual conflict. Although the leading theoretical paradigms of international relations have something to say about region...

Since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, no state has unleashed nuclear weapons. What explains this? According to the author, the answer lies in a prohibition inherent in the tradition of non-use, a time-honored obligation that has been adhered to by all nuclear states—thanks to a consensus view that use would have a catastrophic impact on human...

The March 2006 US-India nuclear accord has been criticised for its likely adverse effect on the nuclear non-proliferation regime, especially the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Without such an accord, however, India, as a rising power, will remain outside the regime and remain less than fully integrated, strategically, politically, economically a...

The non-use of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 has emerged as a major puzzle in international politics. Traditional International Relations scholarship views this largely as a function of the deterrent relationship that emerged between the nuclear powers, especially during the Cold War era. The fact that nuclear weapons have no...

In the past two decades, many have posited a correlation between the spread of globalization and the decline of the nation-state. In the realm of national security, advocates of the globalization thesis have argued that states' power has diminished relative to transnational governmental institutions, NGOs, and transnational capitalism. Initially, t...

The article makes a case for an intense engagement of international relations (IR) scholars in India with the global IR community, especially those specializing in IR theory. While India has increasingly been integrating itself in global economic and political orders, its IR scholar-ship is yet to get international recognition. This article outline...

As the costs of a preemptive foreign policy in Iraq have become clear, strategies such as containment and deterrence have been gaining currency among policy makers. This comprehensive book offers an agenda for the contemporary practice of deterrence—especially as it applies to nuclear weapons—in an increasingly heterogeneous global and politica...

The India-Pakistan conflict is one of the most enduring rivalries of the post-World War era. Thus far, it has witnessed four wars and a number of serious interstate crises. The literature on enduring rivalries suggests that the India-Pakistan dyad contains factors such as unsettled territorial issues, political incompatibility, irreconcilable posit...

The India–Pakistan rivalry remains one of the most enduring and unresolved conflicts of our times. Begun in the aftermath of the birth of the two states from British colonial rule in 1947, it has continued for well over half a century with periodic wars and crises erupting between the two rivals. The conflict has affected all key dimensions of inte...

The contributors to this volume have endeavored to provide both theoretical and policy-oriented analyses and prescriptions on the India–Pakistan conflict, one of the longest lasting rivalries in the contemporary world. In attempting to offer a novel approach, this volume brought together specialists from both international relations and comparative...

India-Pakistan rivalry remains one of the most enduring and unresolved conflicts of our times. It began with the birth of the two states in 1947, and it has continued ever since, with the periodic resumption of wars and crises. The conflict has affected every dimension of interstate and societal relations between the two countries and, despite occa...

Analysts have argued that balance of power theory has become irrelevant to understanding state behavior in the post-Cold War international system dominated by the United States. Second-tier major powers (such as China, France, and Russia) and emerging powers (such as Germany and India) have refrained from undertaking traditional hard balancing thro...

A growing body of scholarly literature argues that globalization has weakened the national security state. In this essay, we examine the globalization school's main propositions by analyzing the national security strategies of four categories of states: (1) major powers, (2) states in stable regions, (3) states in regions of enduring rivalries, and...

The effects of globalization on the national security state are multifaceted, as exemplified by the chapters in this volume. This chapter specifically addresses the question of global terrorism, a key manifestation of the transformed globalized threat environment, and its impact on the national security state. The rise of global terrorism as a majo...

Since the 16th century, balance of power politics have profoundly influenced international relations. But in recent years—with the sudden disappearance of the Soviet Union, growing power of the United States, and increasing prominence of international institutions—many scholars have argued that balance of power theory is losing its relevance. T...

A growing body of scholarly literature argues that globalization has weakened the national security state. In this article, we investigate the impact of globalization on four core areas in which globalization scholars contend that the national security function of states has been affected: 1) the frequency of interstate wars; 2) the level of global...