Bustamante, Kevin E. 2024. Waltz with Me: Structural Realism and Structural Racism in International Politics. Security Studies 33 (5): 742–767.

ABSTRACT: A chasm separates International Relations (IR) scholars interested in race and racism. Conventional scholars treat the topic in a reductionist manner, choosing to focus on unit-level factors such as racial attitudes and identities. Critical scholars are more structural in their approaches but reject traditional causal explanations. I argue that Waltzian theory is a bridge between these two approaches, offering structural causal arguments with wider policy relevance. The essay reckons with critical critiques of Waltzian theory and outlines structural realist approaches to structural racism.

Find the manuscript here or email me for a copy.

Racial Hierarchy and the Balance of Power: Race War in Merze Tate's International Thought

What does race war look like from the view of the marginalized? This paper turns to the concept of race war in Merze Tate’s writings. Tate viewed race war as a potential solution to the problem of the global color line as it required a racialized balance of power that would enable the “darker peoples” of the world to challenge the “white nations”. Tate’s radical twist on the concept suggests a broader understanding of the origins and durability of racial hierarchy in the international system. I use the concept of race war in her thought to derive Tate’s structural theory of international politics. In doing so, the article makes three central contributions. First, the article develops our understanding of Tate’s intellectual contributions given her recent renown in the discipline. Second, this article develops the Howard School of International Relations (IR) contribution to IR theory and helps redress the gendered and racialized exclusions in IR’s history. Third, this article contributes to our understanding of racism and international security with implications for how to think about the prospect of racial equality in the international system.

Working paper available here. 

White Dominion: The Strange Case of Germany in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895

Discussions of whiteness have increasingly come to the forefront of International Relations (IR) since the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and as the Trump administration has centered whiteness as a victimized identity. This victimization has emerged in response to perceived material and symbolic gains among nonwhites. But what is whiteness? How might it affect international politics? I develop in this manuscript a theory of whiteness as dominion. I conceptualize whiteness as a superordinate identity that relies on ownership over nonwhite lands and bodies. This leads to the theoretical expectation that challenges to their superior position will produce a defensive backlash among whites as they try to maintain their racial dominance. Empirically, it is difficult to disentangle my structural argument from individual-level psychological arguments that center white racial prejudices against nonwhite actors as a primary cause of antagonism. I sidestep this issue by examining the case of German participation in the Triple Intervention at the end of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). Relying on German archival and primary sources, I demonstrate that racial animosity was all but nonexistent in German-Japanese relations prior to Japan’s victory. However, Germany quickly became a leading champion of the Yellow Peril discourse once they perceived that they would be denied access to colonies and markets in East Asia. Germany’s sudden about-face led them to join an anti-Japanese coalition with France and Russia to force Japan to cede most of their spoils of war and bringing them to the brink of war in East Asia.

Working paper available upon request.