The article is composed of five sections, with each one proving informative
to the reader. Opening with a short introduction, Acharya calls for more
attention paid to the link between world order-making and racism in IR,
academically and in practice. A brief conceptualisation of relevant concepts is
provided before Acharya highlights the significance of the European transatlantic
slave trade due to its volume, subhuman working conditions, racialisation and
Standard of Civilisation (SOC). Specific attention is paid to the racialisation of
slavery, which occurred as both a response and product of Western racist
thought. The SOC is identified as an institution for gatekeeping European
international society from non-Europeans. On the origins of the American world
order, the absence of racism in the process of U.S. led world order building is
discussed with the intention of arguing that the U.S. had been engaging in world
order building since its foundation. Acharya’s understanding of this absence –
specifically in the creation of the UN – is formulated through the fact that ‘key
drafters of the Charter were from the West’ (p. 36) and Asian and African nations
were underrepresented in the process. Finally, Acharya points to the challenges
in introducing more race and racism studies in IR theorising policy-making.
Throughout, Acharya questions the assumption that the racist and imperialist
world associated with Europe ended with the rise of U.S. hegemony, concluding
with a key argument that the U.S. led world order should not be considered as
an aberration of European practices and belief systems.
A valuable and significant part of Acharya’s work is its focus on the U.S. led
world order as a continuation of the European one. Often, the dominant
narrative of world-order building frames the U.S. as a departure from its previous
European counterpart. This suggests a departure from slavery, empire and above
all racism. Key figures in world order building such as Henry Kissinger hold a
notion of world order that relates to ruling civilisations and through this line of
90
Made with FlippingBook HTML5