Racialization and International Security

Abstract Racialization—the processes that infuse social and political phenomena with racial identities and implications—is an assertion of power, a claim of purportedly inherent differences that has saturated modern diplomacy, order, and violence. Despite the field's consistent interest in power, international security studies in the United States largely omitted racial dynamics from decades of debates about international conflict and cooperation, nuclear proliferation, power transitions, unipolarity, civil wars, terrorism, international order, grand strategy, and other subjects. A new framework lays conceptual bedrock, links relevant literatures to major research agendas in international security, cultivates interdisciplinary dialogues, and charts promising paths to consider how overt and embedded racialization shape the study and practice of international security. A discussion of several research design challenges for integrating racialization into existing and new research agendas helps scholars reconsider how they approach questions of race and security. Beyond diversifying the professoriat itself, revealing and countering embedded biases are crucial to determine how alternative ideas have been marginalized, and, ultimately, to develop better theories.