ABSTRACT
International relations and its chief paradigmatic approaches arose from the ashes of a world transformed twice by world wars. As a discipline, international relations grew out of imperial understandings and diplomatic approaches to world affairs, namely, race studies that informed colonial projects of the past. New threats to security trump conceptual reference points of old. Transnational terrorism, for example, operates beyond the scope of the modern state. Deep-rooted presuppositions of American exceptionalism bred the mistaken assumption that terrorism (a transnational threat) could be fought like any other traditional state-based rival, with primacy given to military responses as a panacea for global order through extended spheres of influence. Security misjudgments can transform political orders from the local to the global. Using past as prologue to inform ongoing policy models tempts political paralysis that gives rise to unintended (but avoidable) disorder, violence, and suffering.
