ABSTRACT
This chapter studies both conflictual and cooperational puzzle metaphors for international relations: everything from descriptions portraying international relations as endless riddles and impossible problems to descriptions of international relations as solvable enigmas, as interesting brain teasers. After sketching associations that we attach to puzzles in general, it gives examples of expert usage relating to international relations: excerpts from IR theories, speeches of foreign policy leaders and media coverage of world news operating with the terms and logic of puzzles and riddles. In addition to demonstrating how puzzle metaphors work in practice, it analyzes recommendations that these metaphors carry with them. It outlines policy choices that seem appropriate in the context of figuring out international puzzles – both along the conflictual lines of desperately trying to deal with the security dilemma and in the cooperational version of solving the puzzle of peace through research, for example by elaborating the democratic peace theory.
