Aikido and world politics: a practice theory for transcending the security dilemma
| Author | Linus Hagström,Niklas Bremberg |
| DOI | 10.1177/13540661211070145 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661211070145
European Journal of
International Relations
2022, Vol. 28(2) 263 –286
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661211070145
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E
JR
I
Aikido and world politics:
a practice theory for
transcending the security
dilemma
Linus Hagström
Swedish Defence University, Sweden
Niklas Bremberg
Stockholm University, Sweden
Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Sweden
Abstract
In the final analysis, is the security dilemma inescapable? Or can the protagonists in world
politics learn to live with never-ending insecurities and the risk of attack without producing
precisely the outcomes that they wish to avoid? This article explores this fundamental
problem for International Relations theory by performing a thought experiment, in which
it applies lessons from aikido to world politics. A form of Japanese budo, or martial art,
aikido provides practitioners with a method for harbouring insecurities, and for dealing
with attacks that may or may not occur, by empathically caring for actual and potential
attackers. The article builds on practice theory in assuming that any social order is
constructed and internalised through practices, but also capable of change through the
introduction and dissemination of new practices. Although an unlikely scenario, aikido
practice could serve as such a method of fundamental transformation if widely applied
in world politics. Empirical examples ranging from international apologies and security
cooperation to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations are discussed, suggesting that
contemporary world politics is at times already performed in accordance with aikido
principles, albeit only imperfectly and partially.
Keywords
Aikido, care, empathy, identity, practice, security dilemma
Corresponding author:
Linus Hagström, Department of Political Science and Law, Swedish Defence University, Box 27085,
Stockholm, SE-11593, Sweden.
Email: linus.hagstrom@fhs.se
1070145EJT0010.1177/13540661211070145European Journal of International RelationsHagström and Bremberg
research-article2022
Article
264 European Journal of International Relations 28(2)
Introduction
With geopolitical tensions on the rise around the world, not least between the United
States and China (e.g. Breuer and Johnston, 2019; Liff and Ikenberry, 2014), there is
renewed interest in the security dilemma. In International Relations (IR) theory, schol-
arly thinking about this dilemma is heavily influenced by realists, such as John H. Herz
(1950), who suggest that states and societies ‘must be, and usually are, concerned about
their security from being attacked, subjected, dominated, or annihilated by other groups
and individuals’ (p. 157):
Striving to attain security from such attack, they [states] are driven to acquire more and more
power in order to escape the impact of the power of others. This, in turn, renders the others
more insecure and compels them to prepare for the worst. Since none can ever feel entirely
secure in such a world of competing units, power competition ensues, and the vicious circle of
security and power accumulation is on. (p. 157)
Liberals, by contrast, often assume that self-interested actors can manage the security
dilemma if they understand the benefits of cooperation and find ways to reassure each other
(e.g. Keohane, 1984). In turn, globalists believe that security dilemmas can be avoided if
the naturally collaborative instincts of humans are not hampered (e.g. Falk, 1987).
Furthermore, scholars who draw on constructivism, poststructuralism, feminism,
Marxism and other critical perspectives highlight how the social dynamics captured by the
security dilemma concept are historical and contingent rather than determined by the struc-
ture of the international system (e.g. Cox, 1981; Huysmans, 1998; Mitzen, 2006; Tickner,
1992; Wendt, 1999). There is also an emerging strand of IR research on how perceptions
and emotions might influence security dilemma dynamics among states and across wider
populations (Baker, 2019; Booth and Wheeler, 2007; see also Jervis, 1978). While attempts
to contextualise the security dilemma have generated important insights, existing debates
tend to rely on Eurocentric or ‘Westphalian’ experiences and epistemes – that is, those
premised mainly on European and North American examples of state- and war-making.
Moreover, they seldom provide practical guidance on how to deal with the risk of being
attacked without (re)producing at least to some extent the outcomes that one wishes to
avoid. This article seeks to rectify both problems by engaging with the Japanese martial art
of aikido.1 Although it evolved from the fighting techniques that Japanese samurai warri-
ors honed for centuries, as a modern form of budo, or martial art, aikido practice aims to
redefine and transcend most understandings of fighting and even self-defence. As such,
aikido is more accurately described as an art of movement, or as meditation in movement.
Translated as ‘the way of harmony/peace’, aikido might seem to share the pacifist goal
that ‘humans should aspire to harmonious living and reject war’ (Cady, 2010 [1989]: 1).
However, such a pacifist aspiration has been portrayed as ‘naïve and even dangerous’ (Cady,
2010 [1989]: 58), for putting aggressors at an advantage. It is, moreover, tr ue that a rhetoric
of harmony or peace has often just barely masked hierarchical, hegemonic and some-
times belligerent and totalitarian ambitions (Callahan, 2008), and that powerful actors
have invoked such concepts to quell dissent and pre-empt conflict (Carr, 2001 [1946]:
75, 151). In the 1930s, for example, harmony was the prescribed ideal for unifying the
Japanese people under the ‘divine’ emperor’s ‘benign’ rule and Asian states under Japan’s
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