Postdoctoral Project

Analogy Change in International Relations: The Case of the Return of the Cold War and the Future of US—China Relations

Swedish Research Council International Postdoc Project at the Department of Economic History and International Relations/Stockholm University. Start date: July 2022

While foreign policy elites used to rely on historical analogies of power shifts to make sense of US-China relations, in recent years the main analogy has changed to the Cold War. This analogy change is puzzling. First, the appropriateness of the analogy is not clear since many key Cold War features do not apply to US-China relations (e.g. China’s deep integration in global economics). Second, the recent deterioration of relations conforms well with expectations based on power shift analogies. The aim of this research is to understand the phenomenon of analogy change, and specifically the rapid emergence of the Cold War analogy as the main reference point for US-China relations through three distinct stages. First, the origins of the Cold War analogy are examined by incorporating conceptual history with digital humanities methods. Second, to assess the appropriateness of the analogy, a comparative historical analysis of current US-China relations with US-Soviet relations is conducted. Third, by drawing from theories on the role of history in IR, different explanations for analogy change are theorized and examined through a discourse analysis of Cold War discourses including interviews with drivers of the discourse. The research is important, since it (1) addresses the puzzling case of analogy change (2) nuances our understanding about the emerging new global order and (3) encourages a responsible reliance on analogies in politics.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

Winkler, S.C. (forthcoming ): New and Old Cold Wars: The tech war and the role of technology in great power politics

Forthcoming in Global Studies Quarterly  

Recently, a ‘tech war’ between the United States and China has emerged, as the United States aims to maintain its technological supremacy while restricting China’s access to critical technologies. However, the drivers and implications of the tech war are poorly understood, as great power scholars typically adopt an instrumental view of technology as a tool of state power. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies and Critical Security Studies, this article challenges the conception of the tech war as merely one area of competition among others. It asks how sociotechnical imaginaries—distinct sets of values, institutions, conventions, and symbols through which members of a political community imagine their past, present, and future—shape U.S. elite discourse on technology in its great power relations, particularly in the contexts of the Cold War and the U.S.-China tech war. Based on a frame analysis of U.S. elite tech discourse on the Soviet Union during the Cold War and China in the present, the article finds that policy elites rely on sociotechnical imaginaries to associate technology’s possible negative effects in society with a geopolitical rival to construct and justify a geopolitical agenda. This allows domestic sociotechnical life to be ordered according to the overriding needs of a narrow, security-oriented national interest. The analysis draws attention to the cultural, social, and political dynamics underpinning technology’s role in great power politics and thus calls for a more multifaceted understanding of contemporary great power rivalry and the tech war.

Please reach out in case you would like to read an early-access copy. 

Winkler, S.C. (forthcoming): Power

Forthcoming in Felix Berenskoetter (ed): Concepts in international relations. A new introduction. Sage.

“International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.”  For better or for worse, these seminal words, penned by one of realism’s founding fathers, Hans Morgenthau, in the 1940s, often mark the inaugural steps for students as they embark on their journey into the study of International Relations (IR). From then onwards, avoiding the concept of power is almost impossible, since it plays a central role in all major theories of International Relations, from realism and liberalism, to feminism, constructivism or Marxism. As a category of political practice, power is likewise ubiquitous, since state leaders are often preoccupied with the distribution of power. 

Despite its popularity, the concept of power is also notoriously difficult to define. Even though some scholars have tried to merge its various readings (esp. Barnett & Duvall, 2005), power is a prime example of an essentially contested as well as a basic concept. Power therefore defies a unified definition. That said, as the chapter will demonstrate, defining and attributing power needs to be seen as a political exercise, for it always carries an assessment (or perhaps even an accusation) of who or what is responsible for the way things are or could be (Connolly, 1974/1993). If an analyst for instance assumes that China holds power over Russia, China’s tolerance of Russia’s war in Ukraine implies that China shares some responsibility for the war. For this reason, power is also closely linked to its legitimate usage, which is why those in power often try to either justify its exertion or deny its existence.

This chapter makes you familiar with diverse understandings and uses of the concept of power. It starts by shortly tracing the concept’s origins as a category of analysis with connections to other fields of knowledge, then proceeds to examine the diverse formulations of power that permeate the academic field of International Relations. Rather than treat all formulations of power equally, the chapter focusses in-depth on one of those formulations, the “soft power” concept. ... 

Please reach out in case you would like to read an early-access copy. 

Winkler, S.C. (2023) "Strategic Competition and US–China Relations: A Conceptual Analysis"

Published in the Chinese Journal of International Politics, https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/poad008 

Despite much attention on “strategic competition” between the USA and China following the declaration of China as America’s “strategic competitor,” the concept’s meanings, origins, as well as different analytical and political functions remain poorly understood. The present article fills this lacuna by conducting a conceptual study of “strategic competition” that traces the concept and its evolution over time. The article finds that there was never a singular or universally applicable meaning of “strategic competition”. When the concept first appeared during the détente era, politicians and scholars referred to the reality of needing to curtail “strategic competition” between the USA and the Soviet Union, and seek cooperative relations, such as through arms reduction treaties. In the late 1990s, the label “strategic competitor” became central to political efforts by the Bush administration to justify their pursuit of military power, deterrence, and American hegemony. Since the Trump administration in the late 2010s, “strategic competition” became a goal to pursue in US-China relations rather than something to be managed. Not recognizing the historical evolution of the term and its many different variations is analytically poor and politically dangerous, and impedes the development of a modus vivendi between the two great powers.

You can find an open-access copy here.

Winkler, S.C., Jerdén, B. (2023) "US foreign policy elites and the great rejuvenation of the ideological China threat: The role of rhetoric and the ideologization of geopolitical threats." 

Published in the Journal of International Relations and Development, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00288-6  

Since 2018, US foreign policy elites have portrayed China as the gravest threat to their country. Why was China predominantly cast as an ideological threat, even though other discursive formulations, such as a geopolitical threat, were plausible and available? Existing major IR theories on threat perpcetions struggle to address these questions. In this article, we draw from rhetoric and public legitimation scholarship to argue that the mobilization of adjacent policy debates was key to mainstream the representation of China as an ideological threat. By mobilizing debates on Russia and the soft power and sharp power concepts, a minority view in US foreign policy with a longstanding ambition to get tough on China established a seemingly natural link between liberal internationalism and an ideologically threatening China. Liberal foreign policy elites who originally opposed a realpolitik view of China could now subsume a geopolitical threat into an ideological one reminiscent of US-Soviet Cold War rivalry. This constituted a necessary catalyst to align most foreign policy elites to understand China as the gravest threat to the United States, at a time when China’s capabilities and behaviour, coupled with a deep sense of insecurity regarding America’s place in the world, provided the necessary backdrop.

You can find an open-access copy here.

Winkler, S. C. (2023). "U.S.-Chinese strategic competition and the Ukraine War: Implications for Asian-Pacific Security". 

Published in the Czech Journal of International Relations, 58 (1) 

Against the background of intensified U.S.-Chinese strategic competition in recent years, this paper examines the implications of the Ukraine War for security in the Asia-Pacific. Based on a qualitative analysis of hundreds of governmental documents, speeches and news article, the study finds that both the United States and China have exploited the Ukraine War to double down on their strategic rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. The Biden administration has cast China and Russia as similar threats to international order; intertwined Europe’s problems with the Asia-Pacific; and pursued a global anti-authoritarian alliance directed against both Russia and China. China has become an increasingly uninhibited security-seeker as it has recognized China’s rapidly deteriorating security situation; America’s resolve to maintain its China policy; and a unique strategic moment to present itself globally as an anti-hegemonic, responsible great power. Given these developments, the security situation in the Asia-Pacific is becoming ever more volatile.

You can find an open-access copy here.

Winkler, S. C. (2019). “‘Soft Power is such a Benign Animal’: Narrative Power and the Reification of Concepts in Japan.” 

Published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(4), 483–501

The purpose of this article is to analyse how the seemingly natural fit between Japan and the soft power concept has been possible despite the notorious vagueness of the concept and what the consequences of soft power’s reification are. By building on recent scholarship on concepts, expert knowledge and narratives, the article suggests that reification processes are best conceptualized as driven by concept coalitions. The article finds that soft power was narrated and nurtured into Japan’s cultural diplomacy, Japan’s relationship with the United States (US) and its security policy. The article, moreover, shows that the more soft power was understood, framed and accepted as benign and necessary, the more persuasive arguments about what Japan should do or be in order to wield soft power became. This has legitimized narratives that suggest that Japan’s 'proactive contribution to peace’ as a responsible ally of the US constitutes an inevitable source of soft power.

You can find an open-access copy here.

Conceptual Politics in Practice: How Soft Power Changed the World 

Defended 11 December 2020 at the Department of Economic History and International Relations (Opponent: Patrick Thaddeus Jackson)

Recipient of the best dissertation award in the Social Sciences at Stockholm University in 2020    

How can we understand the role and consequences of concepts in international politics? Building on the emerging field of critical concept studies, the dissertation examines how actors coin, use, revisit and promote concepts in anticipation of performative effects. Examining such “conceptual politics” in practice, the dissertation advances an analysis of the “soft power” concept—the ability to affect others through attraction—in the context of the ongoing power shift between the USA, Japan and China. In addition, the study conceptualizes and empirically traces how feedback loops, reification and travel shape the trajectory of soft power.

You can find an open-access copy here.

A book manuscript based on the dissertation is currently in preparation.