glossary

Taking land that isn't yours and refusing to give it back. Almost always illegal under modern international law. Almost always done anyway, by countries powerful enough to ignore the consequences. Crimea, 2014.

Protection given to people who can't safely return home. A right under international law, on paper. In practice, a paperwork maze that takes years and frequently breaks the people it's supposed to protect.

Two countries, one table. Direct talks without anyone else in the room. The original diplomatic format. The handshake-photo kind of meeting. Used for trade deals, peace talks, or when one side really doesn't want a third party listening.

A group of countries that act together, formally or informally, on issues where they share interests. The EU is the most organized example. BRICS is a looser one. NATO is a military bloc with a treaty. The Non-Aligned Movement was a bloc of countries that refused to pick sides during the Cold War. The thing about blocs: they're easier to join than to leave.

Started as Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Has since added a rotating cast of countries with mixed motives. Big economies, big populations, mixed friendships. The '+' is doing a lot of work.

The idea that any choice a woman makes is automatically a feminist one because she made it. Used as a shield against critique. Useful for marketers, less useful for actual analysis.

Keep the thing you don't like from spreading. Originally about communism in the 1940s. Now about everything from China to TikTok to ideas your government finds inconvenient.

French, literally 'letting the air out.' A deliberate cooling of tension between rivals. Think the US and USSR in the early 1970s, when both sides realized the arms race was about to bankrupt them. Détente never lasts. It's usually the pause before the next escalation.

The people of a country who live somewhere else, and the generations that come after them. A country's reach made personal. Increasingly used as a political tool. See: dual citizenship programs, 'return' initiatives, and the way governments suddenly remember their emigrants when they need votes.

A complete trade ban with a specific country. No buying, no selling, no exceptions on paper. Stronger than a sanction (which usually targets specific people or sectors). The US has had one against Cuba since 1962. They're loud political statements that hurt regular people more than the leaders they're aimed at, and they leak constantly through third countries.

Your textbook used these interchangeably. They aren't the same. A frontier is a zone, sometimes enormously wide, sometimes a dangerous band of marsh or desert that nobody's quite sure whose. A boundary is a line, surveyed and mapped down to the meter. The whole modern era is the long, grinding story of frontiers becoming boundaries. After J.R.V. Prescott, whose argument this is.

The interconnection of economies, cultures, and supply chains across borders. Made cheap goods cheap and made everywhere look slightly more like everywhere else. The thing nobody can decide if they love or hate. Sometimes the same person, on the same day.

Dominance, but the kind that doesn't have to use force every day because it set the rules. The US has been the global hegemon since WWII. The interesting question for the next twenty years is whether it stays one, and what replaces it if it doesn't.

When a country expands its power over others, by force, occupation, or economic pressure. A word people use about the past more comfortably than the present, even though the present has its own version.

A practice that looks ancient but isn't. Coined by the historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger in 1983. The Scottish tartan, most British royal ceremonies, the modern Olympics' opening rituals: all of them feel like they reach back hundreds or thousands of years. Most of them were either invented or substantially built in the nineteenth century to manufacture a sense of continuity. Useful for thinking about anything sold as 'timeless,' from national customs to state dinner protocols.

More than two countries at the table. Like bilateral, but messier. The UN is multilateral. Climate agreements are multilateral. The harder you try to get everyone in the room, the harder it is to actually decide anything.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A military alliance of 32 countries, mostly in Europe and North America. Founded in 1949 to deter the Soviet Union. Article 5 says an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. The only time it's ever been invoked was after 9/11.

German, literally 'realistic politics.' The idea that foreign policy should be based on practical interests rather than moral ideals. Often used to justify uncomfortable alliances. Kissinger's whole vibe.

Someone forced to flee their country because of war, persecution, or violence. Different from a migrant (who moves for other reasons) and different from an asylum-seeker (who is applying for legal status). The protections refugees are entitled to, on paper, are some of the most ignored rules in the international system.

Economic penalties imposed by one country (or group) on another to change its behavior. Can target individuals, sectors, or whole economies. The hope is to hurt the regime more than the regular people. The evidence on whether sanctions actually work is mixed, but they're politically irresistible because they look like action without requiring war.

Influence that comes from culture, values, and ideas rather than military or economic pressure. The reason American movies, Korean pop, and French wine all matter geopolitically. Joseph Nye coined the term in 1990. Used a lot, defined precisely much less often.

The legal principle that a country has the right to control what happens inside its borders. Almost universally cited and constantly violated. The whole post-1945 international system is built on it. The whole post-1945 international system is also built on getting around it.

A formal agreement between countries with binding legal force. Once signed and ratified, treaties are supposed to outlast governments. The US has historically been better at signing treaties than ratifying them.

The United Nations. Founded in 1945, after WWII, to prevent another world war. 193 member states. Headquartered in New York. The General Assembly has every country, the Security Council has the power, and the gap between those two facts explains most of what people complain about.

The legal principle that when a colony becomes independent, it keeps the borders it had as a colony. The flag changes, the lines don't. It was meant to stop endless wars over every disputed valley, and it has arguably done that. It has also frozen thousands of arbitrary colonial lines into permanent national ones, splitting peoples and welding rivals together because a European civil servant once drew it that way.

The power to block a decision unilaterally. In international law, mostly refers to the Security Council five (US, UK, France, Russia, China). In politics, refers to any actor with the power to stop something even if everyone else wants it.

The idea that the modern world of sovereign states was born at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The political scientist Andreas Osiander went through the actual treaties and found they say close to nothing about sovereignty or non-interference. The 'Westphalian system' is a nineteenth and twentieth century idea projected backward onto a document that was mostly about the internal wiring of the Holy Roman Empire. International lawyers still keep 1648 around as a handy symbol. Just don't mistake the anniversary for the birth.