Imperial ontological (in)security: ‘Buffer states’, International Relations and the case of Anglo-Afghan relations, 1808–1878

Abstract

This article offers a new perspective on 'buffer states'-states that are geographically located between two rival powers-and their effect on international relations with a particular focus on the imperial setting. The paper argues that such geographic spaces have often been analysed through a structuralist-functionalist lens, which has in some cases encouraged ahistorical understandings on the role of buffer states in international affairs. In contrast, the article offers an approach borrowing from the literature on ontological security and critical geopolitics in order to access the meanings that such spaces have for their more powerful neighbours. The paper draws upon the case study of Afghanistan and Anglo-Afghan relations during the nineteenth century and finds that in this case, due to the ambiguity of Afghanistan's status as a 'state', and the failure of British policy-makers to establish routinized diplomatic engagement, Anglo-Afghan relations exhibited a sense of ontological insecurity for the British. These findings suggest previously unacknowledged international effects of 'buffer states', and may apply to such geographic spaces elsewhere.

Tangled Lands: Burma and India's Unfinished Separation, 1937–1948

“…They too rested on the idea that India and Burma's entanglement was a problem to fix through territorial settlement; “right-sizing the state” is almost inevitably a wild-goose chase (O'Leary, Lustick, and Callaghy 2001). Instead, studying the complexities and ambiguities of the transfer of power in imperial frontiers helps us understand and historicize the spatial framing of India and Burma vis-à-vis one another, in and against a borderland that generated not just cartographic anxiety but deep ontological insecurity (M. Bayly 2015; Krishna 1994) for both polities. The Patkai was a periphery where state presence had little spatial or temporal depth, and whose inhabitants approached it with circumspection, intentionality, and agency (Shneiderman 2010).…”

The ontological threat of foreign fighters

“…Even though ontological security was envisioned as an individual need, the discipline of International Relations has often used the state as its referent object of ontological security (Baily, 2014; Mitzen, 2006; Rumelili and Çelik, 2017; Steele, 2008; Vieira, 2018; Zarakol, 2010). This has been justified by arguing that since policy-makers make decisions for their state, they must also account for their state’s identity in their decision-making process (Steele, 2005: 529).…”

“…The British case is not meant to be representative of the ways all lower houses react to foreign fighters but instead is meant as a clear example of the fact that there are component to the phenomenon of foreign fighting that has historically made it problematic and that go beyond the local context of the conflict they join, whether it be Daesh in Syria, Republican Spain or South American colonies. Finally, the British case has shown to be a pregnant area to probe the applicability of ontological security to historical International Relations such as in the case of buffer states (Baily, 2014), British neutrality during the American Civil War (Steele, 2005, 2008) and involvement in Kosovo during the 1990s (Steele, 2008).…”

Rendering Afghanistan legible: Borders, frontiers and the ‘state’ of Afghanistan

“…An obsession with the institutionalisation of geographically 'scientific' boundaries established a cognitive order for the British, allowing them to converse in a political language with which they were familiar (Bayly, 2014;Hopkins and Marsden, 2011). The boundary-making process was also constitutive of identities, of people on both sides of the frontier as well as for the British Empire.…”

“…The powerful emotive force of the frontier has been instrumental in setting forth a series of policies that both simultaneously attempt(ed) to make Afghanistan intelligible to its colonial authors and incorporate(d) strategies of distancing that produced the country as a black hole, forever impenetrable to its imperial audience. An obsession with the institutionalisation of geographically ‘scientific’ boundaries established a cognitive order for the British, allowing them to converse in a political language with which they were familiar (Bayly, 2014; Hopkins and Marsden, 2011). The boundary-making process was also constitutive of identities, of people on both sides of the frontier as well as for the British Empire.…”