ABSTRACT
This chapter studies both conflictual and cooperational nature metaphors for international relations: everything from descriptions portraying international relations as a violent jungle to descriptions of international relations as the flourishing of the best-nurtured offspring. After sketching associations that we attach to the natural environment 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 natural phenomena. In addition to demonstrating how nature metaphors work in practice, it analyzes recommendations that these metaphors carry with them. It outlines policy choices that seem appropriate in the context of international jungles, gardens and deserts – both along the conflictual lines of pushing back the jungle from the garden and in the cooperational version of assisting in the universal evolution in the direction of peace and democracy.
