International relations: More sophistry than science

In light of recent shifts in international diplomacy, most visibly shaped and constrained by enduring US hegemony, it is increasingly difficult to take the discipline of International Relations (IR) at face value. IR has long been presented as a neutral, explanatory science, capable of clarifying how states interact, compete and survive in turbulent global politics. It claims to illuminate the logic of power and diplomacy but this claim was never well founded to begin with; recent developments reveal something more unsettling.

From its very inception, International Relations has functioned more as sophistry than science. Instead of objectively explaining global events, it offers polished arguments that make existing power structures appear coherent, legitimate and morally acceptable. What might look like analytical gaps are not oversights but deliberate.

The discipline has not failed to explain domination; it has been carefully designed to normalise, manage and justify it. This is not a new corruption or incidental flaw; it is the very condition of IR’s existence. IR is structurally sophistic for three reasons.

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First, it emerges alongside empire. Third, it functions not to explain domination but to legitimise it. These are not external influences on an otherwise neutral field.

They are constitutive of what International Relations is and how it operates. Michel Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge helps make sense of this. For Foucault, knowledge is not produced outside power and then applied.

It is produced within power relations and actively shapes them. Disciplines do not merely describe reality. They produce regimes of truth: structured ways of seeing, speaking and thinking that determine what counts as knowledge, who may speak authoritatively and which questions are considered reasonable or excessive.

International Relations is such a regime of truth. It does not simply analyse global politics; it helps produce ‘the international’ as a governable object. It defines what power looks like, how it should be exercised and how it should be justified.

In doing so, it renders certain forms of domination normal, necessary and even benevolent. The historical origins of IR are revealing. The discipline emerged in the early twentieth century, not as a timeless science but as a response to imperial crisis, global war and the need to manage a world dominated by European, and later, American power.

Its foundational concepts, including sovereignty, order, balance and stability, are political solutions for maintaining hierarchy within a formally equal state system, not neutral descriptors. Central to this framework is the Westphalian model of international order. On its surface, Westphalia promises sovereign equality, non-intervention and mutual recognition.

In practice, it has always been selectively applied. It protected European powers while enabling colonial expansion beyond Europe. Today, it shields powerful states while rendering weaker ones open to intervention, coercion, and discipline.

Despite these contradictions, the Westphalian system is treated as sacrosanct. Students are taught to accept it as the only viable model of international order. Alternative political traditions, non-Western forms of authority and indigenous conceptions of sovereignty are marginalised or treated as deviations.

This is not accidental; it is how a regime of knowledge reproduces itself. The same logic underpins the discourse of the ‘rules-based international order’. Presented as the ethical and legal foundation of global politics, it promises constraint, predictability and fairness.

Yet in practice, rules apply unevenly. Powerful states reinterpret, suspend or ignore them when it suits their interests. Weaker states are disciplined for transgression.

The order is rules-based in rhetoric, not effectively. Here, the sophistry of IR becomes clear. The discipline provides the language that makes contradictions coherent.

Intervention becomes a humanitarian responsibility. Sanctions become normative enforcement. Coercion becomes leadership.

The point is not to deny that rules exist but to obscure how selectively they operate. Power is not denied; it is reframed. The concept of soft power, famously articulated by Joseph Nye (2004), is a recent addition to the elaborate sophistry of international politics.

Yet, in reality, there is no such thing as soft power. ‘Soft’ methods are not gentle alternatives or morally distinct strategies; they are inseparable from the logic of power itself. In Foucauldian terms, soft power is meaningless as a separate category: it is simply a tool within the broader regime of power, inherently structured to shape behaviour, produce compliance, and legitimise domination.

Attraction, persuasion, or cultural influence are never neutral; they operate within the same networks of authority that enforce hierarchy, normalise inequality, and manage the international system. In the United States, IR is embedded in an ecosystem of defence departments, security agencies, policy-linked foundations and think tanks with revolving doors into government. The scale of this funding is enormous. Its interests are clear.

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