T.V. Paul to speak on ' Restraining Great Powers Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era '

On December 10 at 5 p.m. the International Laboratory of World Order and New Regionalism will hold a public lecture by T.V. Paul, Professor at McGill University (Canada) and Former President of the International Societies Association.

Professor Paul will give a talk based on his most recent book, Restraining Great Powers Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018), which looks at how subtler forms of balance-of-power politics can help states achieve their goals against aggressive powers without wars or arms races. Rather than employing familiar strategies such as active military alliances and arms buildups, leading powers are increasingly engaging in “soft balancing,” which seeks to restrain threatening powers through the use of international institutions, informal alignments, and economic sanctions. The book and the talk trace the evolution of  “soft balancing” in historical perspective examining its use from the post-Napoleonic era to today’s globalized world.

T.V. Paul  is James McGrill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the President of International Studies Association (ISA) from 2016-17. Prof. Paul is the author or editor of 18 books and over 70 scholarly articles/book chapters including: Status in World Politics (co-edited with Deborah Larson and William Wohlforth), Globalization and the National Security State (with N. Ripsman, Oxford University Press, 2010), and The Tradition of Non-use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford University Press, 2009).

The lecture will be held on December 10, 5 pm.

Adress: 17 Malaya Ordinka St. (Moscow), 1st floor, room 106 (conference room).The working language is English.

The registration is here.