Prospectus Proposal Draft

Racial Hierarchy, Law, and Intervention in

International Relations

Bianca Freeman

Prospectus Draft for the IR Retreat

UC San Diego Political Science

May 21, 2021

Plan for book chapters

1. Introduction

2. Literature

- Intervention (DV) - Racial Hierarchy (IV) - Law (mechanism)

3. A Theory of Racial Hierarchy, Law and Intervention in IR

PART I: Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA)

3. Racial Discrimination and Jurisdiction in Status of Forces Agreements

- DV: SOFA jurisdiction - IV: Racial Discrimination - Theory: Petition for Change in Trial Venue

4. Race and SOFA Jurisdiction Waivers

- DV: 1) United States applies for jurisdiction waiver; 2) Host country grants jurisdiction waiver.

- IV: 2) Racial identity of U.S. soldier in host custody. - Theory: Voir Dire (jury selection)

5. Case Study

PART II: The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

6. R2P in Principle and Practice

7. Race and the Decision to Intervene

- DV: Legislator’s support for a pro-intervention proposal - IV: 1) Legislator’s racial identity; 2) Legislator’s substantive representation

8. Case Study

9. Conclusion

Note to Reader:

Recently, I have decided to shift the framing of my prospectus and proposed dissertation from international law to intervention in world politics as the dependent variable of interest. This change is reflected in the Plan for Book Chapters above.

Moving forward, the project will attempt to explain the selective, uneven decision to intervene in other states, both militarily (R2P) and otherwise (SOFA). As a result, I will be changing the introduction and literature chapters to better reflect this shift and clarify the puzzle (DV) upfront. My chapter on SOFA jurisdiction (hopefully) captures my intent to explain intervention, where race does (some of) the explaining and international law is a mechanism.

I have sincere thanks to express:

Thank you Thomas Flaherty and Branislav Slantchev for serving as discussants at the 2021 IR retreat.

Thank you David Lake, LaGina Gause, Emilie Hafner-Burton, Christina Schneider, Stephan Haggard, Marisa Abrajano, members of the Race and Ethnic Politics (REP) Workshop, members of the International Organization (IO) Workshop, members of the IR workshop, participants of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), Richard Maass, and many others for their generous insights. They have been a great support in my developing this project.

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Literature 6

3 A Theory of Racial Hierarchy, Law, and Intervention in IR 9

I Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA) 12

4 Racial Discrimination and SOFA Jurisdiction 13

5 Race and SOFA Jurisdiction Waivers 33

II The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) 35

6 R2P: Principle and Practice 36

7 Race and the Decision to Intervene 37

8 Discussion and Contribution 39

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

At the 2020 Republican National Convention, then-President Donald Trump lauded the success of

his administration in redressing the mistreatment of Americans imprisoned abroad, declaring that

he was “very pleased to let everyone know that we brought back over fifty hostages from twenty-

two di�erent countries,” (Clark 2020). This “no American left behind” campaign, along with the

assertion that America treats all of its citizens equal regardless of race, were common themes throughout

the convention, though both in stark contrast to the ongoing detention of U.S. soldiers and military

contractors in “far-o�” prisons by foreign governments. At the time of Trump’s remarks, twenty-eight

American contractors, twenty-five of them Black and none of them white, had been held in Kuwaiti

custody over the last five years. While the contractors helped Kuwait outsource its defense as a host

state to the U.S. military, they risked personal exposure to common prejudices toward Black people in

Kuwaiti society. Sometimes, this translated into egregious overcharging of crimes committed, wrongful

convictions, or the lack of due process under Kuwaiti law.

However, the twenty-eight contractors found no recourse in their American citizenship. Despite a

norm of responsibility to the welfare of all citizens imprisoned abroad—an obligation that the Trump

administration would regularly exceed— the United States had overlooked the twenty-eight contractors.

Ambassador Alina Romanowski denied that race played a role in the contractors’ treatment, describing

their cases as “high priority,” (ibid.). On the other hand, another American o�cial explained that the

accused were often assumed to be, “picked up for some sort of just cause.” The o�cial went on to say

that “racism is on such a subconscious level. These guys are so much easier to forget about.” Doug

Bock Clark, a journalist for the New York Times, argued that under the “give-and-take” of diplomacy,

U.S. e�orts to e�ectively address systemic Kuwaiti mistreatment of Black Americans were severely

ine�cient compared to the lengths taken for white Americans imprisoned overseas. In similar fashion,

the opening video of the convention showed Trump at the White House accompanied by six recently

2

freed Americans, five of them white. Not long before this, Navy veteran and one of the twenty-eight

contractors, Nicodemus Acosta, recalled his incarceration in Kuwait. Sentenced to twenty-five years

in prison for a crime he did not commit, Acosta would often struggle to find sleep in his cell without

windows, reconciling his standing in Kuwait and in America.

This project examines the role of racial hierarchy in international politics by exploring strategic

contradictions within the application and enforcement of international law in intervention. Why does the

United States refrain from exercising extraterritorial jurisdiction when a Black servicemember is accused

of violating host country law? Why is humanitarian intervention under the Responsibility to Protect

often invoked within the African context? These questions implicate the notion that legal regimes

within the international liberal order are “race-neutral.” Previous scholarship assumes or implies that

interactions between states lack any formal manifestations of race. This assumption is often reinforced

by the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and similar fora that

are designed to signal states’ commitment to upholding norms against racism. Recognition of this

principle de jure, however, does not indicate racial equality in practice. The questions posed above help

animate this tension.

Recent literature on international law examines the relationship between de jure racial equality and

de facto racial inequality. Contributions by critical theorists elucidate similar patterns in international

law that mediate between two conflicting goals: the projection of norms as neutral and universal on

the one hand, and the application of those norms as a function of alterity based on race on the other.

However, it remains unclear how such normative dissonance shapes state interaction. In addition,

though scholars have carefully considered the ways in which international norms are constrained by

racism embedded at the domestic level, a theory of racial hierarchy in contemporary international

politics remains obscure.

My primary goal is to explain how race helps determine the application and enforcement of

international law and its e�ect on the decision to intervene in other states. Racism has long hidden

behind the principle of equality before the law. Though widely disavowed, racialized inequality becomes

instantiated into the law when application and enforcement vary by race. This process is not unique

to American justice, nor is it confined to politics within states. Race also functions as an important

constitutive component of international hierarchy and interstate interactions. The following proposal

assumes this point of departure and considers how contradictions within the application and enforcement

of law by race help determine the ways states manage their relationships with each other and advance

their interests.

Therefore, to understand the strategic use of race by states in international legal regimes, I propose

a theory of racial inequality that draws from studies on hierarchy in international relations. Specifically,

3

I theorize the interactive e�ects of contractual hierarchy and racial hierarchy in order to examine

important contradictions between equality de jure and racialized inequality de facto. We know that

legal agreements are both the product and site of political struggle between actors that contest at the

margins the rights and duties in their relationship (Lake 2017). While international law appears to

preserve a level of racial and ethnic tolerance through the language of equality and universality, I argue

that this negotiation is nonetheless underwritten and reinforced by a deeper normative structure that

is profoundly hierarchical and racialized. I hypothesize how such normative dissonance implicates the

application and enforcement of international law along dimensions of military intervention.

Thus, this project consists of three main sections designed to answer the following questions:

1. What is racial hierarchy in international politics?

2. What are the interactive e�ects of racial hierarchy and contractual hierarchy? What are the

normative contradictions that result?

3. How and under what conditions do states shape and leverage these contradictions in the decision

to intervene in other states?

In order to answer these key questions, I propose a combination of statistical and case study

analyses. After a review of relevant literatures, I develop a theoretical framework for thinking about

the interactions between racial hierarchy, law, and intervention in world politics. I apply this framework

to two substantive areas of intervention: Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) and the Responsibility

to Protect (R2P). First, I examine SOFAs, a legal arrangement that regulates the terms of interaction

between the United States and its military partners. I consider how these agreements vary by race

and racialized prejudice, ultimately shaping the extraterritorial application of American law in nations

that host U.S. servicemembers. Next, I show how R2P, an emergent principle in international law, is

implicitly racist in its conception and limited application.

This proposal contributes to the growing body of positive theories that shift the debate from if

race matters to when and how race matters in international politics. While postcolonial critique and

the Global IR project appropriately disrupt the practice of eliding race in the study of international

relations (IR), it is not enough for scholars to simply acknowledge or denounce this omission. Moreover,

limiting questions of race to the era of imperialism further obscures the “color line” that W.E.B. Du Bois

discerned as shaping the modern world. Global uprising in response to the killing of George Floyd by

a Minneapolis police o�cer, as well as the ongoing transnationalism of Black Lives Matter and Rhodes

Must Fall, reveal the international implications of racialized prejudice and violence. Similarly, the story

of Nicodemus Acosta and other military contractors illustrates how agreements between states can vary

4

by issues of race and discrimination. Thus, my goal is to move beyond an awareness of the ‘absence’

of race in IR—what Vitalis calls the ‘norm against noticing’—to empirical research that motivates

questions and explanations about a world that remains discernably racialized.

5

Chapter 2

Literature

International Hierarchy: A New Opening1

In its broadest conception, hierarchy is any ordered ranking of states, most often conceived in terms of

status (Mattern and Zarakol 2016; Renshon 2017; Larson et al. 2014). Broad structures of di�erentiation

organize actors into vertical relations of super- and subordination (Zarakol 2017). Unlike narrow or

contractual forms, these orders are not bargained, nor are they typically open for renegotiation though

frequently contested. Alternatively, broad hierarchies show up and reinforce themselves as deep patterns

of inequality. Approached as such, this type of hierarchy is socially ingrained, manifesting in states’ role

perceptions and repertories for action. Importantly, hierarchies create the conditions of possibility in

which actors exist and interact in world politics. By positioning actors in relation to each other, broad

hierarchy demarcates who and what belongs, ascribing to all a superior or inferior status within the

international system. IR scholars that center broad definitions explain imperialism, hegemony, and other

projects of domination through the ordering principle of racial inequality and its material consequences

(Shilliam 2010, 2014; Shilliam and Tilley 2018; Maass 2020; Bell 2019; more cites). Across these

accounts, inequality transcends political domains, shaping interactions between actors at the domestic

and international levels (Buzas 2018, 2020; Resu-Smit 2018; more cites). As social constructs, ascriptive

orders imbue existing norms that are sometimes instantiated into law and institutions– hierarchies that

are more narrow in design.

Di�erentiation by race also inhabits bargained orders in world politics. In this narrower conception,

hierarchy is the exercise of authority by one state over another, and can take varying degrees and forms.

When understood narrowly, international hierarchies are theorized as functional, intentional solutions

to collective problems of global governance (Lake 2009, 2017; Ikenberry 2012; Zarakol 2017; more

cites). Bargained orders are assumed to structure subsequent interactions between actors that contest

at the margins the rights and duties in their relationship. However, this narrow conception generalizes1. excerpt from Freeman, Kim, and Lake commissioned for the Annual Review of Political Science.

6

European colonialism— which clearly rested on racialized beliefs— as but one form of international

hierarchy that was contingent on a peculiar historical time and place (Acharya 2018; Acharya and

Buzan 2010; Kang 2008; more cites). Whether held as discrete or mutually constitutive, narrow and

broad conceptions allow for race to be theorized as a hierarchy in and of itself. Orders constructed

along norms of racial di�erence may thus influence law and policy, thereby justifying or normalizing an

unequal assignment of rights and responsibilities between states.

While hierarchy opens the door to studying race and its e�ects on international relations, few

have walked through it. One of the most prominent collaborative volumes on hierarchy in IR includes

chapters on empire (Phillips 2017), gender (Sjoberg 2017), paternalism (Barnett 2017), military bases

(Cooley 2017) and more, not one contribution focuses directly on race (Zarakol 2017).

Race as Hierarchy

As the Howard School knew, race is a social construct that categorizes or classifies humans along

contrived di�erence. Its categories— races— are always and everywhere contested, a manifestation and

product of social struggle. As such, race is nearly always stratified, entitling members of the ranked

categories di�erent rights and privileges within society. The resulting racial hierarchy is embattled,

reflecting contention at any moment in time. Omi and Winant center this idea of hierarchy in their

theory on racial formation. They explain that hierarchy is established and sustained as a racial

project such that, “everyone knows the rules of racial classification and of her racial identity. . . thus

we are inserted in a comprehensively racial social structure. . . it becomes common sense— a way of

comprehending, explaining, and acting in the world,” (Omi and Winant 1994). Fanon early perceived

this process in the language of colonial domination. To interiorize the expressive norms of the colonizer

was to participate in one’s own oppression and to reflect the very hierarchical structures of your

alienation (1952). Once racial stratification is established and its “racial logics” internalized (Hobson

and Sharman 2005), race becomes an independent criterion for vertical hierarchy in a society. As E.

Bonilla Silva suggests, racialization— the process by which groups are attributed racial meaning—

conditions how actors relate to the social structures and institutional systems they inhabit. As an

organizing principle of subordination and superordination, it orders race hierarchically and engenders

behaviors and interests to fit the position of the groups in the racial regime (1997; 2015). To be sure,

race as hierarchy is international (Barder 2021; 2019). Sylvia Wynter argues that a globally expanding

West used race to define and order the human. The Color Line encoded “deserving” and “undeserving”

status to function for the nation-state and other imperial orders of the Western bourgeoisie (2003).

Already posited by scholars before, race remains a source of ascriptive power.

7

Racial Hierarchy and International Law

International law reflects a set of constitutive norms that inhere within the modern law of nations.

It is not objectively derived, nor are its values and ordering principles universal. As Siba Grovogui

suggests, international law emerged from certain circumstances reflecting dynamics of power that

influenced the content, interpretation, and application of law (Grovogui 1996). Scholars have similarly

challenged the notion of a “Westphalian commonsense,” which purports an objective morality of state

sovereignty as the basis for international order. Antony Anghie (2006) critiques “good governance” as

a universally held principle— jus gentium— and its strategic promotion in the non-European world.

Across these critiques, international law proceeds from normative structures that are determinate

and implicated by racial hierarchy. Legal constructs mediate between two conflicting goals: the

projection of western law and jurisdiction as objective and universal on one hand, and the suppression

of non-western legal institutions and juridical capacity on the other. For example, U.S. SOFAs regulate

the delegation of legal authority between military partners. However, the agreement almost always

applies uneven constraint on host jurisdiction, particularly for countries in the global south. Racial

hierarchy intensifies this contradiction. If international law is to become truly ubiquitous, then alterity

based on race has to be overcome by the assimilative influence of international law and its derivative

norms. According to Anghie, “the concept of race is inextricably connected with one of the defining

characteristics of international law: its universality.” Grovogui similarly notes that non-Europeans,

though incorporated into the international order, are perceived as “not ready” for full subjectivity

or sovereignty. Though this contradiction is reproduced and reenacted in ways that lack any formal

manifestations of race (though this pattern can change), law is a form of racialized power that reflects

the broader structural norms of racial hierarchy. Another, more stark contradiction is the application

of di�erent rules to select countries and peoples. Grovogui’s reinterpretation of the history of the ’law

of nations’ is particularly pertinent:

Europeans hegemonic powers applied di�erent combinations of legal norms to di�erent peoples

and regions, for the purposes of political domination and economic exploitation. Far from being

neutral, the juridical postulates o�ered as a means to resolving the other’s “ills” (i.e., heathenness,

backwardness) have been propositions for intervention and domination. In addition, the constellation

of principles and rules that applied to non-Europeans was part of a generative process dependent

upon a tradition of alterity and erasure, of silencing the rights, claims, and interests of non-

Western communities.

Grovogui makes plain that sovereignty is not uniform across space and time but reflects di�erent yet

concurrent legal norms that prescribe and legitimize specific patterns of actions in each region of the

world. International legal norms give form to the rules and standards of behavior that are disparate

but complementary across di�erent countries and held together by historic power relations.

8

Chapter 3

A Theory of Racial Hierarchy, Law, and Intervention in IR

A Framework1

Racial hierarchy has direct implications for intervention. Depicted in Figure 3.1, racial hierarchy

conditions how any actor perceives its interests, interprets the position and interests of racial others,

and acts accordingly. As a broad order, it engenders deep patterns of inequality that inhabit beliefs,

social norms, and systems of governance. Racial hierarchy assumes di�erent ideological and structural

forms. White supremacy (Bell 2013, 2014, 2020; Henderson 2013; Vucetic 2010; Sabaratnam 2020;

Watson 2001; Rutazibwa; Maass 2020; Watson 2001) paternalism (Sampson 2002; Getachew 2018,

2019; Baker 2015; Pratt 2013), and other racisms stratify to advantage the dominant actor. Racism

can be conscious and intentional, directly a�ecting how an individual or group interacts with others,

or latent, as unconscious but nonetheless real bias. Conscious or not, it a�ects police on patrol,

shopkeepers, employers, jurors, and myriad others whose choices a�ect civic life. Racial hierarchy,

then, is both reinforced and challenged by the actions and reactions of people in ongoing social

struggle. Such interactions are commonplace because racial hierarchy often imposes itself implicitly

and comprehensively through norms. World politics— its problems and proposed solutions— heavily

feature this normative construction of racial order.

IR scholars argue that hierarchies are composed of norms— widely held principles of acceptable

behavior — that rank actors according to some often implicit but broadly understood rule (Lake 2017;

Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; many more cites). Norms are so deeply woven into the fabric of social

life that they appear “natural,” “neutral,” and are thus taken for granted. Though often disembodied

(Bicchieri 2006) and decentralized, norms constrain behavior through promotion and codification. The

integrative framework above illustrates this interaction. In an e�ort to establish or reify racial categories,

dominant groups often seek to transform racial stratification into law. Since race and racial hierarchies

exist only if a su�ciently large portion of society accepts the categories and their stratification, those at1. excerpt from Freeman, Kim, and Lake commissioned for the Annual Review of Political Science.

9

Figure 3.1: Interactions of Racial Hierarchy, Law, and Intervention in International Relations

the top of the racial hierarchy attempt to constrain rights and privileges by law (1a). In doing so, they

aim to harness the enforcement powers of the state to the maintenance of the racial hierarchy (1b). As

law guides the decision to intervene in other states (2a), it leverages broader processes of legitimation

to naturalize and reproduce unnatural di�erences. The translation of racial hierarchy into law can be

direct, as in the laws governing slavery or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in the United States. It can

also be indirect, as when law is written in general terms but with racist intent or e�ect, as with literacy

tests for voting at a time when Blacks in the United States were excluded from education. Georgia’s

2021 ban on the provision of food and water to citizens waiting in long lines to vote similarly targets

jurisdictions with large populations of Black voters and other voters of color. Uneven application of

law by race also plagues contemporary international politics. Uneven application of law by race also

plagues contemporary international politics. Below, I consider how interventions like Status of Forces

Agreements (SOFAs) and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) are, if not explicitly in intent, then

in practice, highly racialized. By defining certain behaviors and practices of racial subordinates as

“unlawful,” racism constrains and produces the system of law and, in turn, authorizes and promotes

the racial hierarchy.

Racial hierarchy also implicates the decision to intervene in other states (3a). Intervention, like

law, is constrained by a countervailing structure of inequality that produces both the actors and their

set of possible actions within international order. Though obscured by the notion of neutrality and

prevention, the decision to intervene is negotiated from an intersubjectively defined constraint that

preconditions states and locates di�erence among them. The act of humanitarian intervention has long

been assumed to reflect racialized beliefs about “at risk” populations. More recently, similar claims

have been theorized and empirically tested in political science literature on foreign aid (Baker 2015).

As a source of embedded inequality, race stratifies countries and attributes to them legal status and

rights that reflect social position within the racial hierarchy. Intervention made legal through laws that

are themselves racialized reinforces the legal grounds to intervene (2b) and the racial order from which

10

the decision inheres (3b).

(Not finished with theory, still contemplating and will extend parts).

11

Part I

Status of Forces Agreements (SOFA)

12

Chapter 4

Racial Discrimination and SOFA Jurisdiction

Introduction1

Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) have long been scrutinized as a form of intervention in world

politics. A common framework between the United States and its military partners, SOFAs designate

the legal status of U.S. servicemembers in a foreign country.2 In particular, SOFAs regulate when and

how the domestic laws of host governments are applied to American soldiers.3 While status agreements

stop short of immunizing U.S. personnel from criminal sanctions, SOFAs e�ectively constrain the legal

authority that host countries may exercise over U.S. forces within their own territories. Central to

these agreements is an attempt to reconcile the extraterritorial application of American law in foreign

countries. Although policymakers and legal scholars heed the balance of rights and obligations between

sending and receiving states— SOFAs as a shared sovereign prerogative— the division of legal authority

remains the most important and frequently contested issue.4 Since the onset of the Cold War, this

question of jurisdiction has proved crucial to the forward-deployment of U.S. troops and other strategic

interests around the world.5

Despite the ubiquity and salience of SOFAs in defense partnerships, few studies have examined

status agreements. Most consider SOFA negotiation within larger patterns of basing politics, military

agreements, or other trade-o�s between security and sovereignty involving U.S. forces overseas. While

some scholars account for the legal constraint SOFAs place on host governments and populations, the1. Abstract conditionally accepted for a special issue on race and security. Will present paper on panel at APSA 2021.2. Yeo, Andrew I. "Security, Sovereignty, and Justice in US Overseas Military Presence." International Journal of Peace

Studies 19.2 (2014).3. Mason, R. Chuck. "Status of forces agreement (SOFA): What is it, and how has it been utilized?." LIBRARY OF

CONGRESS WASHINGTON DC CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE, 2009.4. Yeo 2014; Mason 2009; Eichelman, M. E. (2000). International criminal jurisdiction issues for the united states

military. Army Lawyer, 2000(8), 23-32. Norton, W. J. (1975). United States Obligations under Status of ForcesAgreements: A New Method of Extradition. Ga. J. Int’l Comp. L., 5, 1.

5. Rosenfeld, Erik. "Application of US status of forces agreements to article 98 of the Rome Statute." (2003): 273.Prugh, George S. "The Soviet Status of Forces Agreements: Legal Limitations or Political Devices." Mil. L. Rev. 20(1963): 1.

13

literature has yet to provide a systematic evaluation of SOFAs or a comprehensive test of jurisdiction.

Typically, such work has been anecdotal.

At their core, SOFAs reflect assumptions about potential bias within the legal system of the host

country. I develop this claim by examining SOFAs as a petition for change in trial venue. Before a

SOFA is created, host countries retain primary right to adjudicate violations of host country law. In

order to protect American soldiers from foreign courts, the United States pro�ers a status agreement.

In particular, SOFAs allow the United States to select it its own jurisdiction as the “venue” in which

criminal cases are brought against U.S. soldiers. Similar to the logic of home-court advantage, the

United States petitions for a change in jurisdiction in attempt to gain legal leverage over its host

partner. However, a transfer in venue also anticipates the likelihood that host jurisdiction will deliver

verdicts against American soldiers for reasons other than a conviction of justice. If SOFAs are a response

to factors that render an impartial jury improbable in the original host country venue, then bias on the

basis of ethnicity and race could matter for the decision of jurisdiction.

I argue that the terms of U.S. extraterritorial law are informed by how racial and ethnic minorities

are treated within host states. Like a defendant that petitions for change in trial venue on the grounds of

racial discrimination, I suggest that the United States gauges similar bias when negotiating jurisdiction.

Notwithstanding its own prejudice, the United States attempts to ensure impartiality of judgement

through the SOFA. Since selecting a jurisdiction is analogous to selecting a trial venue—in essence,

a jury— the United States is more likely to see host states that exhibit domestic racism as unable

to provide a ‘jury of peers.’ Similar to the well-documented ways that discrimination based on race

justifies a change in trial venue, I suggest that racial discrimination within the host country matters

to the United States when negotiating who prosecutes American defendants. I test this theory of

SOFA jurisdiction by examining the e�ect of racial discrimination within host countries on the United

States’ decision to share legal authority over its soldiers. I find that the United States is less likely to

share jurisdiction with host partners that exhibit high discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity,

controlling for other plausible explanations.

Considering the often-overlooked role of race in international relations (IR) has important theoretical

and empirical implications for the study of security. By accounting for race as a constitutive component

of interstate interaction, this study implicates the notion that foreign policy within the international

liberal order is “race-neutral.” I argue that status agreements illuminate this tension. Although SOFAs

solve collective action problems through the regulation of legal authority between states, they are

simultaneously conditioned by expectations about race and racial discrimination. Thus, in addition to

the analysis outlined above, this paper seeks to establish a broader conversation about how race and

racism shape the extraterritorial application of American law under the status agreement. Importantly,

14

existing work on SOFAs has near-excluded the principle of extraterritoriality, a key source of legitimation

that was racial in its early conceptions and uneven applications. Historians have long studied status

agreements as race-based colonialism in international law. IR scholars have made the similar point

that foreign basing contracts like SOFAs—a bargained concept of hierarchy—are not beyond prevailing

symbols of subordination that reinforce pathologies of colonial legal regimes. Therefore, I extend this

study by explicating the various ways that SOFA jurisdiction, a form of intervention in international

politics, reflects beliefs about race that are hierarchical.

After reviewing the literature on SOFAs, I theorize jurisdiction as a petition for change in trial

venue on the basis of racial discrimination within the host country. I o�er a straightforward test of

jurisdiction that examines the United States’ decision to either share or retain legal authority over

its soldiers hosted in foreign territories. Then, I extend this discussion by analyzing SOFAs as a

form of extraterritorial law. Specifically, I consider how status agreements are shaped by race and

racism in world politics. This article contributes a systematic study of SOFAs to the literature on

international law and intervention generally. In addition, this study contributes a positive theory to the

growing body of work that is shifting the debate from if race matters to when and how race matters

in international relations. Scrutinizing the often implicit assumption that security is “race-neutral”

enhances our understanding of foreign policy and the biases that permeate its study and practice.

What are Status of Forces Agreements?

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States entered into Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs)

with nations it envisioned sustaining an indefinite military presence. These agreements have remained

an integral feature of U.S. force projection beyond their initial use in containment policy. SOFAs

designate the legal status of U.S. servicemembers in a foreign country. They establish when and how

the domestic laws of host governments are applied to U.S. personnel. In general, SOFAs constitute a

framework of legal protections and privileges for American soldiers deployed to host states. The United

States has been party to more than 350 SOFAs with over 46 percent of states in the international

system. Figure 4.1 illustrates the growth of SOFAs since 1951. While the majority of existing status

agreements involve the United States as sending state, several other states authorize and maintain

similar arrangements with various partners. South Korea, Mozambique, France, Russia, Kyrgyzstan,

the United Kingdom, and Germany among others have negotiated comparable basing contracts.

SOFAs are generally broad in scope and cover a range of administrative and operational issues. As

a legal framework for the conduct of U.S. military installations overseas, status agreements regulate daily

practices like the carrying of weapons, taxation, jurisdiction, the wearing of uniforms, import and export

rights, drivers’ licenses, supply procurement, and services rendered by sending and receiving states.

15

Figure 4.1: Growth of Status of Forces Agreements, 1951 - 2020.

While SOFAs exhibit common rules and authorizations between the host government and the United

States,6 the agreements vary in substance, length, and title. This quality allows for ultimate flexibility

in tailoring the SOFA to specific personnel needs. Moreover, SOFAs vary in who they cover. Members of

the U.S. Armed Forces, civilian employees at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and those under

contract to the DoD can be protected by a status agreement when stationed overseas.7 According

to a U.S. Department of State report in 2000, SOFAs help protect the rights of about 246,504 U.S.

military personnel, 48,000 American civilians, and approximately 180,770 dependents. Legal coverage,

and the substance of SOFAs in general, is largely determined by the nature and duration of U.S.

military activity within the host country. The status agreement can be designed for limited objectives

or for longterm engagement. Some SOFAs are written as standalone while others are designed within

a more comprehensive security arrangement like Defense Cooperation Agreements (DCA). SOFAs may

be entered into based on executive order, congressional action, or authority from previous treaties.

In addition, the characteristics of status agreements often reflect the quality and maturity of the

relationship between the host country and the United States. The politics that emanate from U.S.

military presence in host communities further shape the revision of SOFAs in base renegotiation.

As a bargain between states, status agreements involve particular actors and interests. Before

SOFAs are signed and entered into force, they are often developed over an exchange of diplomatic notes

between the countries’ embassies. Within this process, U.S. interests in obtaining and maximizing

status protections for its deployed forces are represented by the O�ce of Negotiations and Agreements6. Text of Global SOFA template provided at the end of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) external

review in 2015.7. See U.S.-El Salvador SOFA (2007) for example.

16

(SNA) in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military A�airs (PM).8 As the principle

link to the DoD, PM/SNA negotiates international agreements to meet U.S. security requirements.

Individuals in SNA draft the necessary cables and memos to facilitate SOFA deliberation between

foreign governments and the Department of Defense (DoD). SNA leads the dialogue and conclusion

of SOFAs and other deployment-related status protections in consultation with other State and DoD

o�ces.9 Once an agreement is reached, the SOFA is signed by an o�cial envoy of each state. It is

common for the U.S. ambassador accredited to the host state to sign the agreement. Although a similar

delegate authorizes the SOFA for the host state, the o�ces and actors that facilitate its negotiation at

prior stages may vary across host countries.

SOFA Jurisdiction

The most important and contested issue in SOFAs is jurisdiction. At their core, status agreements

attempt to reconcile the application of American law in foreign territories. When a U.S. soldier is

accused of breaking host country law, the SOFA in place determines whether the host government

or the U.S. government exercises jurisdiction over that soldier. Before the terms of jurisdiction are

bargained, the United States and the host country first determine that a SOFA would be beneficial for

both parties. Upon mutual consent, the parties enter negotiation from the proposition that jurisdiction

is held exclusively by the host country. It retains legal authority over its territory and the persons within

it unless a SOFA grants the United States exception to that authority. Typically, SOFAs are designed

to reestablish when and how the domestic laws of the host country are applied to U.S. personnel. Thus,

status agreements e�ectively transfer legal authority to the United States. The particular division of

jurisdiction between signatories can vary in two distinct ways that are outlined below.

Exclusive Jurisdiction

SOFA jurisdiction mainly falls under one of two categories: exclusive and concurrent. SOFA

jurisdiction is exclusive if the United States has sole legal authority over is personnel in a host country.

Under an exclusive arrangement, the host government agrees to surrender its jurisdiction over American

forces within its territory for the duration of the SOFA. When an American soldier breaks host country

law, the United States gets to decide what, if any, disciplinary action to take. Some legal scholars have

noted that exclusive jurisdiction allows discretion for downplaying or dismissing violations in question.

As Mason suggests, the right to exert legal control can provide U.S. servicemembers complete immunity

from laws of the receiving state. This is the case despite common language across SOFAs obliging U.S.

personnel to respect host country sovereignty. The United States still enjoys significant latitude in its8. https://www.state.gov/bureau-of-political-military-a�airs-o�ce-of-security-negotiations-and-agreements-pm-sna/9. DoD O�ce of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the O�ce of the General Counsel, the Joint Sta�, Combatant

Commands, the Department’s regional bureaus and Embassies, and the O�ce of the Legal Advisor.

17

Figure 4.2: SOFA Jurisdiction Types

exclusive legal rights within the host country. Exclusive jurisdiction is generally bestowed in two ways.

First, SOFAs may include a provision that accords U.S. personnel a status equivalent to that of the

administrative and technical sta� at the U.S. Embassy in the host country. This particular privilege

comes from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, an international treaty that grants

diplomatic immunity from criminal jurisdiction of the receiving state. Second, SOFAs may also include

a provision that authorizes exclusive control by the United States over its personnel within the host

territory. This clause may be provided in addition to or in place of the Vienna provision within the

status agreement. Figure 4.2 outlines these features of exclusive jurisdiction.

Concurrent Jurisdiction

When jurisdiction is shared between sending and receiving states, the status agreement is concurrent.

Under this type of arrangement, the SOFA divides jurisdiction according to which nation’s laws have

been violated: U.S. law, host country law, or both. Violations of U.S. law fall strictly under U.S.

jurisdiction. Violations of host country law are subject to host country jurisdiction. However, when

the crime in question is in violation of both laws, a formula exists to allocate jurisdiction between

states. The host country has primary jurisdiction unless two exceptions are met: 1) when the violation

18

Figure 4.3: SOFA Jurisdiction, 1951 - 2020

is committed inter se (by Americans against Americans), and 2) when the o�ense is carried out by

Americans during performance of o�cial duties (defined unilaterally by the United States). In these

situations, the United States assumes primary jurisdiction. This type of SOFA is intended to ensure

a legal framework of checks and balances that guards against excessive claims while also preserving

good relations between sending and receiving states. Under concurrent jurisdiction, U.S. personnel are

protected by fair trial guarantees that are comparable to those provided by the American justice system.

However, in cases that violate both countries’ laws, the right to prosecute can be ambiguous and often

conditional on the details of the alleged crime committed. For these cases, the United States often seeks

its own jurisdiction pursuant to its request of the host country, which is typically granted. Concurrent

SOFAs can become problematic when the United States chooses to assert its legal authority in cases

that are dubious or that clearly fall under host jurisdiction. Ambivalence by the United States toward

the primary right of host countries can undermine the cooperative nature of SOFAs. Host countries

have criticized the terms of jurisdiction as “unequal” or “colonial.” Subsequent renegotiations of SOFAs

have involved concerns over a deprivation of host sovereignty. SOFA jurisdiction type by country is

illustrated in Figure 4.3.

The Strategic Use of Racial Discrimination in Status of Forces Agreements

SOFAs are often a strategic response to asymmetric jurisdiction between sending and receiving states.

Prior to a SOFA, the host country as a receiver of foreign military personnel retains the exclusive right

to adjudicate violations of host country law.10 Thus, without a SOFA in place, American soldiers10. Mason 2009.

19

are subject to the jurisdiction of the receiving state. In order to minimize this prospect, the United

States as sending partner pro�ers a SOFA to limit legal exposure of its forces to host country courts.

Specifically, SOFAs grant the United States either exclusive right or shared right over U.S. troops

stationed overseas. In doing so, the agreement transfers legal authority from the host country to

the United States, legitimating its enforcement options against the host country when an American

soldier breaks the law.11 Under the SOFA, U.S. interests in intervening through status protections are

vindicated.

However, the United States’ decision to share or withhold jurisdiction under the SOFA is not

always explained by a preference for unbridled influence, even if consented to by the host government.

Variation in the division of legal authority suggests that intervention through the SOFA is motivated by

additional factors. Importantly, competition over jurisdiction as a disputed good between the United

States and host countries bears certain costs. Though the United States would prefer to keep sole

jurisdiction over its servicemembers whenever and wherever they are deployed, it designs the SOFA to

simultaneously constrain its own extraterritorial reach. Concurrent, or shared jurisdiction reflects this

decision. To an extent, the trade-o� of exclusive jurisdiction signals U.S. commitment to international

norms of territorial sovereignty.12 Such a concession incentivizes host partners to adopt more favorable

policies toward its American counterparts. Not surprisingly, shared jurisdiction has been associated with

greater demands for authority by host states. As Yeo suggests, the salience and scrutiny of sovereignty

in basing relationships were closely linked to norms of decolonization during the 1950s and 1960s.13

By implication, the terms of SOFA jurisdiction began to amplify ideas of statehood and territorial

integrity. Increased media coverage and better reporting of tragic incidents or crimes committed by

foreign soldiers in receiving states may also help explain compounding assertions of sovereignty by host

governments. 14 Notwithstanding, variation in the terms of SOFA jurisdiction has yet to be theorized

or examined systematically.

At their core, SOFAs reflect the United States’ assumptions about potential bias within the legal

system of the host country. The agreement anticipates the likelihood that host jurisdiction will render

verdicts against American soldiers for reasons other than a conviction of justice. According to the

International Security Advisory Board (ISAB), a Federal Advisory Committee tasked with reviewing

U.S. negotiation of SOFAs, the United States’ key interest in jurisdiction is preventing exposure of11. Nettleton, Sophie. “Asymmetric Jurisdiction Clauses and Multiple Related Agreements.” Allen Overy LLP, JD

Supra, 2020, www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/asymmetric-jurisdiction-clauses-and-53779/12. Colonel Richard J. Erickson, Status of ForcesAgreements: A Sharingof Sovereign Prerogative,37 A.F. L. REV. 137,

140 (1994); Yeo 2014.13. Yeo 2014; Davis, Sasha. "The US military base network and contemporary colonialism: Power projection, resistance

and the quest for operational unilateralism." Political Geography 30.4 (2011): 215-224.14. Allen, Michael A., et al. "Outside the wire: US military deployments and public opinion in host states." American

Political Science Review 114.2 (2020): 326-341; Willis, Charmaine, The Right Frame of Mind? An Analysis of GlobalAnti-US-Military Protests (September 1, 2019); Koo, Jimmy H. "The uncomfortable SOFA: Anti-American sentiments inSouth Korea and the US-South Korea status of forces agreement." Nat’l Sec. L. Brief 1 (2010): 103; Gage 2013.

20

its personnel to “an inherently unfair system. . . that departs fundamentally from U.S. concepts of

basic procedural fairness.”15 Some agreements are explicit about prejudicial judgement by publicity,

demographic factors, or the content of host country law itself. In a 1998 revised supplementary

agreement to the NATO SOFA16 , authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany (receiving state)

consented to refrain from enactments that, by application, would cause injustice or inequality toward

visiting forces from NATO member states. In particular, the SOFA prohibits the German judiciary

and police from discriminating against any person by reason of her race or nationality, among other

attributes. Concerns over racial discrimination have also surfaced in highly contested cases of foreign

custody. In a 2020 report on the detention of American military contractors in Kuwait, a U.S. o�cial

suggested that negative stereotypes of Africans and African Americans in Kuwaiti society played a

role in the frequency of Black contractors’ arrest and prolonged detention compared to that of their

white counterparts.17 While few SOFAs cover U.S. contractors, this case helps to illustrate how

interactions between host country legal systems and American personnel are implicated by racial bias

and discrimination. Those familiar with the Kuwaiti case intimated that Black contractors would have

likely received comparatively light sentences if covered by a SOFA.

A Theory of SOFA Jurisdiction: A Petition for Change in Trial Venue

This argument implies that the terms of U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction are informed by how racial

and ethnic groups are treated within host states. Such reasoning is developed by examining SOFAs as

a petition for change in trial venue. At their core, SOFAs are a contract designed to settle disputes

over jurisdiction between sending and receiving states. The agreement rendered sets the “venue” in

which violations of host country law will be adjudicated. In the way that clients petition for a change in

trial venue to increase their “home-court” advantage, the United States drafts the SOFA as a petition

for change in jurisdiction in order to maximize its advantage over the host state when allegations are

brought against an American soldier.

Recall that before a SOFA is created, host countries retain primary right to make and enforce

decisions that are legally binding, including over U.S. servicemembers within their territory. To prevent

foreign custody and prosecution of its forces, the United States writes the SOFA as a motion to change

the venue that such cases are decided. In doing so, the United States selects its own jurisdiction to

adjudicate crimes committed by its soldiers in host countries, e�ectively shifting legal authority towards15. International Security Advisory Board, “Report on Status of Forces Agreements.” 2015.16. Revised Supplementary Agreement (RSA) To Amend the Agreement of 3 August 1959, as Amended by the

Agreements of 21 October 1971 and 18 May 1981, to Supplement the Agreement between the Parties to the NorthAtlantic Treaty regarding the Status of their Forces with respect to Foreign forces stationed in the Federal Republic ofGermany.

17. Clark, Doug Bock. “Arrested, Tortured, Imprisoned: The U.S. Contractors Abandoned in Kuwait.” The New YorkTimes, The New York Times, 28 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/magazine/american-prisoners-kuwait.html

21

itself. Just as petitions for change in venue are filed by counsel to protect their clients from potential

bias, the United States pro�ers a SOFA to constrain the terms of jurisdiction in ways that protect its

interests from foreign courts. This transfer of legal authority through the SOFA endows the United

States with key benefits. For example, U.S. military and civilian courts o�er American soldiers and

counsel the advantage of familiarity with the law, the judges, and the norms of particular circuits of

jurisdiction.18 Venue clauses grant similar leverage. When a party petitions to choose the court where

its legal case will be decided, that party typically selects the jurisdiction where its counsel are located.

This choice reflects its incentives to reduce potential litigation costs and to obtain advantages over the

opposing team that resides outside of the proposed court’s jurisdiction.19

Like venue transfers, SOFAs are employed in response to factors that render an impartial jury

improbable in the original host country venue. When an American soldier is under indictment overseas,

she is not necessarily entitled to due process or guaranteed trial by a fair cross section of the community.

Further, even if jurors are impaneled in accord with common law practice (voir dire)20, their composite

may nonetheless fail to constitute a jury of the defendant’s peers. In particular, American soldiers that

are accused of violating host country law are subject to the collective judgement of a community for

which they lack membership. Perceiving the limits of representative jurisdiction within the host country,

the United States considers additional factors to determine if impartiality is compromised. Implicit in

this assessment is the abstraction of ‘a jury of peers.’ Since a fair cross section— “peers”— depends on

the status or attributes of the defendant and community in question, the United States relies on the

characteristics of the host venue to evaluate the potential for bias against its soldiers. Building on the

criminal defense literature, if the analogy of a change in trial venue holds, then grounds for a SOFA

may also confront the problem of discrimination on the basis of race.

This argument suggests that the terms of SOFA jurisdiction vary by how racial and ethnic

minorities are treated within the host country. Just as venue transfers anticipate discrimination on

the basis of race in the community of the precedent court,21 the United States may gauge similar bias

when selecting a jurisdiction. Despite its own prejudice, the United States seeks to ensure impartiality

of judgement through the SOFA. In order to protect American soldiers from prosecution by foreign

courts, I argue that the United States attempts to limit exposure of its racially heterogenous forces18. LeVine, Mary. “What Is a Contract Venue Clause and Why Is It Important to Me?” Blalock Walters, P.A., 28 July

201519. Brown, Darryl K. "The role of race in jury impartiality and venue transfers." Md. L. Rev. 53 (1994): 107; Brown

cites: See, e.g., Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 528 (1975) ("Selection of a petit jury from a representative cross sectionof the community is an essential component of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial."); see also 28 U.S.C. § 1861(1988) ("All litigants in Federal courts entitled to trial byjury shall have the right to grand and petitjuries selected atrandom from a fair cross section of the community in the district or division wherein the court convenes.")

20. Van Dyke, J. M. (1977). Jury selection procedures: Our uncertain commitment to representative panels. Cambridge,MA: Ballinger.

21. Brown 1994; Underwood, B. D. (1992). Ending race discrimination in jury selection: Whose right is it anyway.Colum. L. Rev., 92, 725; Fukurai, H., Butler, E. W., Krooth, R. (1993). Race and the jury. In Race and the Jury (pp.3-11). Springer, Boston, MA.

22

in host countries that exhibit higher levels of racial discrimination within their legal systems. Thus, I

hypothesize the following:

H1: The United States shares jurisdiction in host countries with lower discrimination towards racial

and ethnic groups.

Data and Research Design

I utilize a Department of State online archive of SOFA transcripts. I also refer to the department’s

Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in

Force 22 and the RAND Dataset of U.S. Security Treaties and Agreements23, both of which record the

universe of SOFAs among other treaties. I estimate the determinants of SOFA jurisdiction using logistic

regressions. Standard errors are clustered on the host country to account for possible autocorrelation.

Since some SOFAs are written to update or override a previous SOFA, but are signed and implemented as

standalone agreements, they are not isolated and thus occur within the context of a coherent, established

relationship between sending a receiving state. Analysis is conducted at the country-year unit.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable, Jurisdiction, measures the division of legal authority over American

soldiers stationed in host countries. I code the jurisdiction clause of 254 SOFAs between 1951-2020 as

a dichotomous indicator which records concurrent jurisdiction, coded “1” if legal authority is shared

between the host country and the United States, and exclusive jurisdiction, coded “0” if legal authority is

held exclusively by the United States. When coding this variable, I make a set of important assumptions.

Although the RAND dataset counts over 350 SOFAs in existence, I code 254 status agreements based

on the public availability of the transcript and additional archival sources that suggest the status of

jurisdiction.24 The data for Jurisdiction are coded at the level of national jurisdiction since SOFA

terms, including the delegation of legal authority, are bargained and specified at the country level. I

address important measurement validity questions about asymmetry between legal authority de jure

and de facto in the discussion section.

22. United States. Department of State. Treaty A�airs Sta�, and United States. Department of State. O�ce of theLegal Adviser. Treaties in Force: A List of Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States in Force on. Vol.6346. US Government Printing O�ce, 1982.

23. Kavanagh, J. (2014). US Security-Related Agreements in Force Since 1955: Introducing a New Database. RANDPROJECT AIR FORCE SANTA MONICA CA.

24. List of additional sources used in SOFA jurisdiction coding in Appendix.

23

Independent Variables

Ethnic Civil Liberty Equality: I proxy for racial discrimination by including the indicator Ethnic

Civil Liberty Equality from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem).25 This variable comes from the civil

society participation index (v2clsocgrp) and records the extent to which social groups are able to enjoy

access to justice, property rights, freedom of movement, and freedom from forced labor.26 The measure

relates to the question, “Do all social groups, as distinguished by language, ethnicity, religion, race,

region, or caste, enjoy the same level of civil liberties, or are some groups generally in a more favorable

position?” V-Dem’s measure ranges from 0-4, where “0” corresponds to low ethnic civil liberty equality

while “4” relays the converse. Data coverage extends from 1789 to 2019, and I include observations

from the 1951-2019 time period. This proxy is intended to capture the extent to which discrimination

on the basis of race and ethnicity permeates societies within host countries.

Sharia and Judicial Corruption: Several potential confounders may also explain SOFA jurisdiction.

First, I include Sharia and Judicial Corruption to proxy for host country legal systems. The delegation

of jurisdiction could be driven by the quality of law within the host state. Due process, individual

liberties, and protection from state interference likely matter to the United States when selecting the

level of potential exposure American soldiers will have to foreign courts. Sharia is coded “1” for host

countries that exhibit Islamic legal traditions and “0” for host countries that exhibit no Sharia.27 As a

majority common law country, the United States may be less inclined to surrender its political authority

to host countries that diverge in legal dimension and possibly legal protections. Judicial Corruption

from V-Dem relates the question, “How often do individuals or businesses make undocumented extra

payments or bribes in order to speed up or delay the process or to obtain a favorable judicial decision?”

This indicator ranges from 0-4, where “0” corresponds with “always” while “4” relays the converse.

Judicial Corruption covers 1789 to 2020. I include observations from the 1951-2020 time period. When

a host country indicates high levels of judicial corruption, the United States may be less likely to share

jurisdiction.

National Capability: SOFA jurisdiction may depend on the capabilities of host countries. In

particular, the degree of legal control a host country cedes to the United States may reflect the bargaining

power of that host country, as indicated by their level of international power. I use the Composite

Index of National Capabilities (CINC) from the Correlates of War (COW) project,28 which contains

six dimensions of international power: military spending and personnel, total and urban population,25. Coppedge, Michael, et al. 2021. ”V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v11.1” Varieties of Democracy

Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdems21.26. Webster, Kaitlyn, et al. "Ethnic and Gender Hierarchies in the Crucible of War." International Studies Quarterly

64.3 (2020): 710-722.27. Data. World Legal Systems. JuriGlobe Research Group. University of Ottawa.28. Greig, M., Enerline, A. J. (2017). Correlates of War Project, National Material Capabilities (NMC) Data

Documentation (Version 5.0) period covered: 1815-2012. Department of Political Science, University of North Texas.

24

iron/steel production, and energy consumption. These data have been used widely and cover 1816-2000.

I use the CINC score for each state’s capabilities for the 1951-2000 time period.

Defense Pact: It is reasonable to expect alliances to a�ect the United States’ decision to share

legal authority over its servicemembers in host countries. As a particularly strong defense pact, I use

NATO Membership as a control. I include observations from the 1951-2020 time period.

U.S. Troops Deployed: SOFA jurisdiction may reflect the size of U.S. troop deployment to host

countries. I include a control from R package troopdata for the 1951-2020 time period.29

Ethnic Fractionalization: Ethnic heterogeneity is commonly used to proxy for tension along ethnic

lines. In a country that is ethnically homogenous, the level of prejudice by ethnicity or race may be

lower than that of an ethnically heterogenous country where the potential for prejudice is present. I

include Ethnic Fractionalization (EFindx) from the Historical Index of Ethnic Fractionalization (HIEF)

dataset,30 which covers each country for all available years between 1945 to 2013.

U.N. Voting Similarity: Delegation of jurisdiction could depend on how aligned the host country

is with the United States. I use the voting similarity index (agree2un) in the United Nations General

Assembly Voting dataset, which records the total number of votes where both states agree on an issue

divided by the total number of joint votes. U.N. Voting Similarity Index covers 1946-2011 and ranges

from “0” to “1”, where “1” represents total a�nity between the United States and the host country.

Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics

Variable N Mean St. Dev. Min MaxJurisdiction 254 0.748 0.435 0 1Ethnic Civil Liberty Equality 228 2.960 0.863 0.644 3.910Judicial Corruption 227 2.720 0.910 0.540 3.920U.S. Troops Deployed 247 5,071.000 13,637.000 0.000 83,462.000Sharia 254 0.039 0.195 0 1National Capability Index 208 0.008 0.011 0.00000 0.057NATO Membership 241 0.432 0.496 0.000 1.000Ethnic Fractionalization 175 0.305 0.263 0.000 0.889UN Voting Similarity Index 189 0.565 0.290 0.000 1.000Non-European Majority 254 0.291 0.455 0 1

29. Allen, Michael A., Michael E. Flynn, and Carla Martinez Machain. 2021. “Global U.S. military deployment data:1950-2020.” Working Paper; Kane, Tim. 2005. “Global U.S. troop deployment, 1950-2003.” Technical Report. HeritageFoundation, Washington, D.C.; Vine, David. 2015. “Base nation: How U.S. military bases abroad harm America andthe World.” Metropolitan Books, Washington, D.C.; Michael A. Allen, Michael E. Flynn, and Carla Martinez Machain.2020. “Outside the wire: US military deployments and public opinion in host states.” American Political Science Review.114(2): 326-341.

30. Laitin and Posner.

25

Descriptive statistics for the variables are listed above in Table 4.1. To address missing observations

in some of the independent variables, I use a multiple imputation method.31 A correlation matrix and

missing data plot is provided in the appendix.

Results

Table 4.2 reports estimates of the determinants of SOFA jurisdiction. Each model represents an

imputation for a total of five imputations (I plan to combine imputations). Taking into account the

imbalance of exclusive SOFA jurisdiction in the sample, I implement a logit model that accommodates

rare events.32 Standard errors are clustered on the host country to account for possible autocorrelation.

The results show that discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity within the host country has

a strong e�ect on SOFA jurisdiction. The estimates on the ethnic civil liberty equality indicator

are always positive and statistically significant. In other words, the United States is more likely to

share jurisdiction with host countries that exhibit higher levels of equality. When considered to proxy

for racial discrimination, this result suggests that the delegation of legal authority over U.S. soldiers

stationed overseas is determined, in part, by how the host country treats racial and ethnic minorities.

The direction and significance of the ethnic civil liberty indicator hold in other model specifications,

including Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), in addition to

coding jurisdiction only by country instead of country-year.

Figure 4.4 provides a graphical representation of the marginal e�ect of racial and ethnic discrimination

on SOFA jurisdiction. When examined against the control variables, it is clear that racial and ethnic

equality is associated with shared jurisdiction, though to a lesser extent than UN voting similarity,

national capability, and NATO membership. This is not surprising. The United States is more likely to

share legal authority with host partners that wield greater military capabilities, that share strong defense

pacts, and that are aligned on important international issues. However, controlling for these likely

explanations, the results show how discrimination on the basis of race matters for the extraterritorial

application of American law.

31. Multiple imputation has been shown to reduce bias and increase e�ciency compared to other remedies like listwise deletion and mean imputation. I perform five imputations for each missing cell in the data matrix, creating five“completed” data sets in which the observed values are the same, but the missing values are filled in with a distributionof imputations that reflect uncertainty about the missing data. See Honaker, J., King, G., Blackwell, M. (2011). AmeliaII: A program for missing data. Journal of statistical software, 45(7), 1-47.

32. MLEs such as logit with very rare events can yield biased coe�cient estimates if one or more covariates come closeto perfectly separating positive and negative cases. See Andrew Gelman et al., “A Weakly Informative Default PriorDistribution for Logistic and Other Regression Models,” Annals of Applied Statistics 2, no. 4 (2008): 1360–83; andGartzke and Lindsay 2020.

26

Racism and U.S. Extraterritoriality

Concerns over the impartiality of host jurisdiction are only one side of the coin however. While SOFAs

solve collective action problems through the regulation of legal authority between states, they are

simultaneously conditioned by expectations about race and racial discrimination. This paper also seeks

to understand how race and racism shape the extraterritorial application of American law under the

status agreement. Existing work on SOFAs has near-excluded the principle of extraterritoriality, a key

source of legitimation that was racial in its early conceptions and uneven applications. Historians have

long studied status agreements as race-based colonialism in international law. IR scholars have made

the similar point that foreign basing contracts like SOFAs—a bargained concept of hierarchy—are not

beyond prevailing symbols of subordination that reinforce pathologies of colonial legal regimes. Below,

I extend this study by explicating the various ways that SOFA jurisdiction reflects beliefs about race

that are hierarchical.

As a form of intervention, SOFAs legitimate the extraterritorial application of U.S. law. Applied

to individuals, extraterritoriality describes a foreigner’s state of being exempt from local jurisdiction,

typically as a result of diplomatic negotiation.33 Though the legal implications of extraterritoriality

in status agreements have been considered, IR research has largely ignored its historic application as

non-territorial colonialism under international legal frameworks. At its core, extraterritoriality reflects

a set of beliefs about host countries that derive from explicitly civilizational constructs of 19th and early

20th century international law. In particular, the notion that non-Europeans lack “government suited

to the white man” was embraced by imperialist states as ‘just cause’ for extraterritorial jurisdiction, and

in some cases, capitulation.34 As a modern project of Western extraterritoriality, SOFAs may engender

“civilized” and “less than civilized” notions of host country type that are inherited from a policy of

domination based on race. Intervention through extraterritoriality has long been the norm, a hallmark

of Western policy that, “declare[s] the rest of the planet to be in a state of exception— a kind of state of

emergency where ‘normal’ rules [do] not apply.”35 It is therefore problematic to analyze SOFAs devoid

of their contextual tradition in colonial extraterritoriality. Understanding SOFAs as a mere postwar

invention obscures extraterritoriality in current world politics.

While its origins extend back to Roman and Greek antiquity, extraterritoriality is a prominent

feature in both classical colonial projects and what Ruskola calls the “non-territorial imperialism”

of U.S. jurisprudence overseas. For Ruskola, race was front and center in the application of U.S.

extraterritorial law. Legal history of the U.S. Court in China helps illustrate this point. The “unequal33. Cassel, Pär Kristo�er. Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China

and Japan. Oxford University Press, 2011.34. Grovogui, Siba N’Zatioula. Sovereigns, quasi sovereigns, and Africans: Race and self-determination in international

law. Vol. 3. U of Minnesota Press, 1996.35. Ruskola, T. (2008). Colonialism without colonies: on the extraterritorial jurisprudence of the US Court for China.

Law and Contemporary Problems, 71(3), 217-242.

28

treaties” imposed on Qing dynasty China up until the 20th century institutionalized di�erential legal

treatment of Western merchants and local Chinese populations based on ethnic identity. Though the

United States never formally colonized China and received formal consent for its extraterritorial legal

presence— “even if only at gunpoint”— the practice of Western extraterritoriality emerged as a key

technology of non-territorial imperialism, a “colonialism without colonies.”36

Crucial to the rationale for extraterritorial privileges retained by powers of the global North was

the denial of non-European capacity to govern. According to Grovogui, extraterritoriality and native

capitulation were reconciled by the belief that indigenous peoples possessed inferior social habits, moral

sentiments, and political structures.37 Since native populations were assumed to lack appropriate civil

institutions and notions of rights, their conquest was deemed justifiable. Consequently, European

settlers, and later American traders, unilaterally imposed the rules that governed interactions among

themselves and between Europeans and indigenous peoples. This colonial perspective energized the

discursive structures of extraterritorial jurisprudence in host countries around the world. For example,

during the congressionally sanctioned tenure of the U.S. Court in China, the court held that, “‘China

in so far as the administration of the estates of Americans decedent therein is concerned, is a separate,

distinct and complete jurisdiction, similar to that of an unorganized territory belonging to the United

States’— a comparison that paid equally little respect to Chinese sovereignty.”38 Eurocentric and

racist rhetoric in American popular discourse frequently conflated U.S. extraterritorial jurisdiction

with the legal status of colonies. In addition, American judges assigned to extraterritorial courts

throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were not uncommonly selected from U.S. territorial

colonies. Understanding the American extraterritorial regime within its imperial legacy is necessary for

evaluating SOFA jurisdiction as an extraterritorial project. The underlying principle of extraterritoriality

over which SOFAs and colonial practices overlap may translate similar racialized beliefs about host

societies.

As a legal contract, SOFAs are the product and site of political struggle between host countries

and the United States. Both actors contest at the margins the rights and duties in their relationship.39

In this narrow conception of hierarchy, status agreements legitimate power by solving collective action

problems and enhancing human welfare. However, I suggest that SOFAs are simultaneously conditioned

by broader norms of racial hierarchy. Figure 4.5. illustrates the interaction of broad and narrow

hierarchies as mutually constituted laws and norms. Racial inequality, as a social norm, has direct

implications for SOFA jurisdiction (1). Racial hierarchy legitimates the United States as “most”

sovereign and, in turn, its authority to set the terms of SOFA jurisdiction in accord with the normative36. Ruskola 2008.37. Grovogui 1996.38. Ruskola 2008.39. Lake 2017.

29

Figure 4.5: Interactions of racial inequality, extraterritoriality, and SOFA jurisdiction.

beliefs and expectations that advantage it. From a prevailing norm of racial inequality, the United States

selects western signatories for shared jurisdiction, while pressuring non-European states to relinquish

their juridical sovereignty. Since this authority is conferred de jure on the United States by host

governments, the racialization of SOFA jurisdiction becomes normalized.

Racial hierarchy also conditions rules of behavior, or principles, that can be strategically translated

into law and policy. These interactions are depicted by arrows two (2) and three (3). Extraterritoriality—

foreigners‘ exemption from the law within in a host country— is a principle that extends back to

antiquity and embraces the expectation that (certain) people are “immune” from the laws of another

territory after they enter that territory. The principle of extraterritoriality has persisted across space and

time because it is implicitly framed by the existing social norm of racial inequality. Since extraterritoriality

relies on the notion of inherent di�erence between people, it “fits” or a�rms prevailing beliefs about

race. Despite international recognition of the norm against racism— articulated as a human right by the

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations

in 1965— scholars maintain that the enduring significance of race continues to shape the character of

international law. While it is not easy to identify any area of international law where distinctions of race

are overtly maintained, racial inequality is “silently” sustained and reproduced through principles and

their codification into law. In this framework, racial inequality dresses extraterritoriality with a language

that lacks any formal, socially objectionable manifestations of race. However, this framing is no less

racialized. Extraterritoriality, borne of racial inequality, is readily translated into the SOFA agreement

(3). This transmogrify is crucial for the United States as a primary entrepreneur and benefactor

of racial inequality, extraterritoriality, and the terms of jurisdiction. When translation occurs, law

normalizes behavior and reinforces its interior principles and norms— making the cyclical nature of

these interactions complete (4). Racialization of host countries through the law of SOFA jurisdiction

feeds back into its initial principle of extraterritoriality and its underlying norm of racial inequality.

Drawing from this theory of racism and extraterritoriality, I hypothesize the following:

30

H2: The United States withholds jurisdiction from host countries with non-European majority populations.

In order to test this argument, I use the Ethnic Dimensions (EPR-ED) dataset and the Ethnic

Power Relations (EPR) dataset to create a dichotomous indicator which records Non-European Majority,

coded “1” if a host country has a predominantly non-European population, and "0" if a host country is

majority-European. The data cover 1946-2017. I use data from the 1951-2017 time period and impute

2018-2020 observations.

The results reported in Table 4.3 suggest that the United States is less likely to withhold shared

jurisdiction from host partners that have non-European majority populations. The estimates on the

Non-European Majority indicator are always negative and statistically significant. This result suggests

that the delegation of legal authority over U.S. soldiers stationed overseas varies by the racial/ethnic

makeup of the host population. Figure 4.6 illustrates the marginal e�ect of a racial and ethnic majority

in the host country on SOFA jurisdiction. Controlling for other likely explanations, the results show

that shared jurisdiction is denied to non-European host partners and is reserved for countries that are

co-ethnic to the United States.

Discussion

Under construction

31

Chapter 5

Race and SOFA Jurisdiction Waivers

Abstract

Status of Forces Agreements (SOFAs) delegate jurisdiction over American soldiers deployed overseas.

If a U.S. soldier violates host country law, the United States may apply for a jurisdiction waiver of

which the host country may grant. When does the United States request a jurisdiction waiver from the

host government? When does the host government agree to waive its primary right to indict a U.S.

soldier accused of committing a crime? I examine how this interaction between SOFA signatories is

conditioned by race. Since SOFA jurisdiction waivers are applied for and granted on an individual case

basis, I argue that the racial identity of the U.S. soldier in question matters for waiver activity between

the United States and the host country. I use individual-level data of U.S. soldiers in host custody to

test the e�ect of race on the decision to apply for and grant SOFA jurisdiction waivers. This article

aims to show how the extraterritorial application of American law is uneven by race. In addition, this

article seeks to demonstrate how the racial identity of a U.S. soldier a�ects host jurisdiction waivers.

Considering the often-overlooked role of race in foreign policy has important theoretical and empirical

implications for the study of international politics and security.

Theory

Voir Dire (jury selection)

Plan on Data and Design

Dependent Variables: 1) United States applies for jurisdiction waiver; 2) Host country grants jurisdiction

waiver.

Independent Variable: Racial identity of U.S. soldier in host custody.

33

Unit of analysis: Individual-country-year

I will estimate a model using multilevel Bayesian logistic regressions. Multilevel modeling will

allow me to treat observations as nested within groups—for this study, individual servicemembers

nested within countries. For example, it is possible that Japan is generally more willing than Turkey to

grant a jurisdiction waiver to the United States. With this approach, I will also address within-cohort

homogeneity of American soldiers based on race. Since expectations of soldiers likely vary by race at

the group level, a multilevel model allows for between-racial-group di�erences by treating group-level

intercepts as a random variable for the model to estimate. I will use individual-level data to test

the e�ect of race on the decision to apply for and grant SOFA jurisdiction waivers while controlling for

crime type, foreign imprisonment, military branch, rank, base, and other demographic and host country

attributes that can influence waiver activity.

34

Part II

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

35

Chapter 6

R2P: Principle and Practice

Under construction

Descriptive analysis and theory

DV: UN invokes R2P (UNSC, HRC, UNGA)

IV: Ethnic majority

36

Chapter 7

Race and the Decision to Intervene

This chapter will consider how race a�ects the pledging or withholding of support for humanitarian

intervention abroad by members of Congress. Though studies of congressional voting behavior on

foreign policy tend to focus on partisanship, ideology, and constituency interests, I argue that the

racial identity of congressional members matters when making voting decisions on humanitarian action

under R2P. Since there is also reason to believe that various aspects of interventions themselves may

influence a legislator’s support for the policy, I will also examine the influence of race against this

alternative explanation. Multivariate logistic regression models will be estimated to understand which

factors— party politics, public opinion, the features of intervention, and race— are important for driving

congressional votes on humanitarian intervention.

The dependent variable (DV) in each vote choice model is the odds ratio that a member of

Congress supports a measure promoting humanitarian intervention. I follow Hildebrandt, Hillebrecht,

Holm, and Pevehouse (2012) in coding the DV as a dichotomous variable of a legislator’s support

for a pro-intervention proposal on the House or Senate floor since this action is observable. The

unit of analysis is the member-vote, coded “1” for a vote in favor of intervention, and “0” otherwise.

The data (Hildebrandt, Hillebrecht, Holm, and Pevehouse 2012; Poole 1997) cover votes on measures

relating to humanitarian intervention in Somalia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Bosnia. Worth noting is the

coverage of these data relative to the onset of R2P as an emergent, highly contest norm in international

politics. U.S. interventions in Somalia, Kosovo, Haiti, and Bosnia occurred before the formal adoption

of the Responsibility to Protect principle at the UN World Summit in 2005 and its first invocation

by the Security Council in Libya 2011. However, the legal principle surfaced from debates about

humanitarian intervention in the 1990s. R2P was pro�ered in response to atrocities considered failures

of the international community (8,000 lives in Srebrenica and 800,000 lives in Rwanda). Thus, I follow

Hildebrandt et. al. in assuming that decisions to intervene after R2P’s initial creation are made with the

37

responsibility to protect in mind. The data cover 24 votes (13 in the House, 11 in the Senate) between

1993 and 2000 for a total of 6,758 observations. In addition to modeling congressional members’ support

for humanitarian intervention in the four cases, I will extend the data by including congressional votes

on interventions in Libya, Sudan (Darfur), and Syria. I select these cases based on data availability

and the explicit reference of R2P by the Security Council, of which the United States is a permanent

member.1 I use data from GovTrack, which reports congressional member votes by ideology in the

house and senate, as well as position statements on R2P in each instance. For the independent variable

(IV), I code the racial/ethnic identity of each lawmaker. I rely on data from the Congressional Research

Service (CRS).

In addition to examining the e�ect of race on commitments to R2P in Congress, I will also consider

how substantive representation—congressional members working for minority interests— may predict

willingness to intervene. I adopt Stout’s and Garcia’s (2020) approach to substantive representation

as a measure of perceived empathy toward racial/ethnic groups that are underrepresented in American

politics. A politician’s incentives for protecting minority interests can vary from “other-oriented”

emotional responses to someone’s welfare to electoral ambitions (though these are not mutually exclusive).

Whether empathetic or strategic, substantive representation may signal a level of fidelity to the issues

racial/ethnic minorities face. I argue that congressional members’ commitment to working for minority

interests matters when voting on humanitarian action. While substantive representation directly

involves actors and incentive structures in domestic politics, I suggest that its empathy mechanism

translates into decisions about R2P. This claim hinges on important assumptions about the welfare of

the populations in question, underlying beliefs about those populations, the nature of the proposed

intervention on the table, and how it is perceived. I plan to theorize the e�ects of substantive

representation on commitments to R2P in Congress. I will derive hypotheses to test econometrically.

1. South Sudan, Sudan, DRC, CAR, Mali, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, Great Lakes Region, Sudan(Darfur), Liberia, Libya, Yemen, Cote d’Ivoire are countries referenced in the context of R2P at the UNSC according tothe Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (2021). I need to investigate further if there were U.S. congressionalvotes on intervening in these crises.

38

Chapter 8

Discussion and Contribution

The Norm Against Noticing Race in International Relations1

IR is grappling with a renewed call to reform its longstanding elision of race, manifested most recently in

Foreign Policy (Zvobgo and Loken 2020; Shilliam 2020; Bhambra et al. 2020) and Foreign A�airs (Blain

2020). These interventions on race and racism in IR have since been amplified and complimented by

various public speaker series (GPEP-R 2020), webinars (Henderson 2020; Bridging the Gap 2020), and

discussion forums (Shilliam 2020), each retrieving important contributions that criticize IR scholarship

as silent on race. Those that expose and contest this silence aptly describe it as particularly tenacious

in mainstream IR. Robert Vitalis (2000), citing Toni Morrison (1992), calls this the ‘norm against

noticing’, the practice of overlooking and denying race and racism as determinants in world politics.

While new e�orts are being made to take race seriously, like Zoltan Buzas’ piece in the 75th anniversary

special issue of International Organization (2020) and the special issue call on race by Security Studies

(2020), IR scholars are still coming to terms with a discipline that is historically less disposed to

questions of race. Some have appropriately discerned the collective intellectual deficit incurred by IR

for its willful oversight (Krishna 2001; Shilliam 2013). Calls to engage race in theoretical and empirical

inquiry, however, have intensified in response to the transnationalism of racial justice and decolonizing

movements like Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall (Sabaratnam 2020). As interest in race

and IR swells and more scholars begin to acknowledge the norm against noticing, I seek to center

scholarship that evaluates and helps change this norm. In doing so, I recognize that such critiques

inherit contributions from earlier work dating back to the field’s inception.

Scholars have long interrogated the notion that IR is colorblind. Seminal critiques of this notion,

of which the ‘norm against noticing’ is a contemporary interpretation, lay bare the centrality of race

and racism in the making of an intellectual and professional discipline. The mythology of a colorblind

tradition in American IR (Füredi 1998; Vitalis 2000) was rendered explicit by early disciplinary work1. excerpt from Freeman, Kim, and Lake commissioned for the Annual Review of Political Science.

39

on the role of white supremacy in world-making. To the forebears of this critique, what was often taken

to be ‘race neutral’ was, in practice, silence and evasion about the African presence in world politics

(Doty 1993; Krishna 2001; Sampson 2002; Persaud and Walker 2007; Hobson 2007; Henderson 2013).

As Sankaran Krishna explains, race constitutes a crucial epistemic silence around which modern IR is

continuously made and coheres. For Krishna, contemporary IR discourse is predicated on a systematic

politics of forgetting, an abstraction from the central role of racialized violence in the construction of

nation-states and the system in which they inhere. Despite former disciplinary preoccupations with

colonial administration and ‘race development,’ IR scholarship had largely absolved itself from issues

of race (Vitalis 2000; Rutazibwa 2020; Sabaratnam 2020).

The ‘timeless problems’ of anarchy and the security dilemma had come to occupy the core questions

of IR in line with Cold War imperatives, making race irrelevant for many scholars. Relations between

states, where material power and national interest, however defined, shape behavior, were assumed to

occur independent from or above the ‘domestic’ issue of race. Intellectual commitment to the assumption

of anarchy in world politics, however, was coterminous with the discipline’s ‘willful amnesia’ about race

(Krishna 2001). Indeed, while implicitly assuming that anarchy meant “primitive” and equated the

resulting state of nature with supposedly violent peoples outside Europe, scholars stripped anarchy of

any notion of race and racism. For some, the norm against noticing reflects a common di�culty in

accepting the idea that the ‘international’ in international relations was imagined along the color line

(Vitalis 2015).

For critical theory and cognate fields, forgetting race cannot be reduced to discomfort, disinterest,

or unawareness among scholars (Sabaratnam 2020). By implication, the ‘invisibility’ of race in IR was

not accidental but designed. Similar observations have been made about the professional makeup of IR

as mostly white and male, an institutionalized feature that produces and reproduces itself (Krishna 2001;

Vitalis 2000, 2015; Henderson 2013; Shilliam; Lake 2016; Zvobgo and Loken 2020; Sabaratnam 2020;

Klotz 2020). Notwithstanding a collective avoidance of the epistemological grounding of American IR,

the norm against noticing race in world politics was crucial to the recasting of a discipline that sought to

detach itself from its racist past while preserving white-centered accounts of the world. That which was

made most visible in IR— its distinguishing intuitions and methodologies— is also that which conceals

race, denying the possibility of its explanatory power.

A Critique on the Silence of a Discipline

To understand the critique of IR’s ‘race blindness’ is to begin with the Howard School. The tradition

of unveiling the modern world from its racialized origins was pro�ered by Howard University-based

African American IR scholars dating back to the late 19th century discipline (Henderson 2013, 2017;

Vitalis 2015; Shilliam 2020). Arguably path-breaking as amplified by Robert Vitalis, the contributions

40

associated with the Howard School highlight IR’s systematic failure to appreciate race and its inscription

into world order. Silence about racism in the study of IR, evoked in part by the exclusion of work

that advanced its critique (Vitalis 2000; Krishna 2020), obscured race as an orienting worldview in

the emergent field. Despite various adaptations of publications like Foreign A�airs — previously the

Journal of Race Development from 1910 to 1919 — its genealogy implies what early scholars deemed the

subject of IR to be (Reeves 2004; Blatt 2004). This veneer of substantive change in the discipline was

counterpoised by W.E.B. Du Bois’ seminal thesis on the color line (1903). Later extended in “The Color

Line Belts the World” (1906), Du Bois states that, “the most significant fact of the opening century,

viz.: The Negro problem in America is but a local phase of a world problem. ‘The problem of the

twentieth century is the problem of the Color Line.’” For Du Bois, white supremacy and anti-blackness

were organizing principles of U.S. expansionism. Similarly, other scholars of the Howard School made

plain that theorizing the international required careful scrutiny of its imperial, colonial, and neocolonial

foundations (Tate 1943; Locke 1916; Bunche 1936; Frazier; Logan; Williams). Notwithstanding, mid-

century debates in the field over stability, dependency, and territorial sovereignty were underpinned

with racial ontologies, willfully or otherwise, that privileged whiteness in its assumptions about the

social world (Vucetic 2016; Sabaratnam 2020).

This early critique of IR’s ‘race blindness’ was also elaborated in opposition to the incipient field’s

essentialist notions of race. For Alain Locke and Ralph Bunche, race was sociological— or what we

recognize today, a ‘social construct’ based on phenotypic characteristics that are themselves socially

constructed (Stewart 1992; Omi and Winant 1994; Bonilla Silva 1997). By advancing this argument,

Locke and Bunche removed race from its Darwinist biological and anthropological moorings, e�ectively

rejecting the ‘hierarchy of races’ assumption that anchored the developing field of IR (Henderson 2013).

Locke’s sociological thesis of race as a product of culture (1916) informed Bunche’s subsequent analysis

in A world view of race (1936). For Bunche, race was arbitrary. Devoid of any scientific meaning, race

was a device of national policy that shaped bargaining in class conflict during the interwar period. The

Howard School also anticipated much of the postwar scholarship on race and racism in IR. To be sure,

it developed some of the earliest theory for modern war as an outcome of imperialist and other racial

projects (Du Bois 1915; Tate 1943; Bunche 1936), a point delivered in Henderson’s critique (2017) of

Vitalis’ apparent disassociation of these scholars from the formulation of IR theory. Though met with

scant regard, the insights developed by the Howard School unveiled an IR that not only noticed race,

but also retained it as a prominent axis of inquiry and theory-building. To the extent that IR was race

blind, it embraced a fiction that hovered outside of its own history (Henderson 2013; Krishna 2001;

Biswas 2020).

Will discuss contribution to intervention literature (under contribution)

41