International Relations theory assumes that the struggle for power is not only ahistorical but that international politics is necessarily the realm of a perpetual struggle for power between states. However, by looking beyond the state, the study of global politics may itself reveal the importance of alternative imaginaries just as historically salient as that of the state system. In particular, this book argues that a specific racial imaginary has, over the past two centuries, cut across politically defined state boundaries to legitimate practices of genocidal violence against so-called "enemy races." In Global Race War, Alexander D. Barder shows how the very idea of global order was based on racial hierarchy and difference. Barder traces the emergence of this global racial hierarchy from the early 19th century to the present to explain how a historical racial global order unraveled over the first half of the 20th century, continued during the Cold War, and reemerged during the Global War on Terror. As Barder shows, imperial, racial, and geopolitical orders intersected over time in ways that violently tore apart the imperial and sovereign state system and continue to haunt politics today. Examining global politics in terms of race and racial violence reveals a different spatial topology across domestic and global politics. Moreover, global histories of racial hierarchy and violence have important implications for understanding the continued salience of race within Western polities. Global Race War revisits two centuries of international history to show the important consequences of a global racial imaginary that continues to reverberate across time and space.

Alexander D. Barder is Associate Professor of International Relations at Florida International University. He is author of Empire Within: International Hierarchy and its Imperial Laboratories of Governance and co-author of Beyond Biopolitics: Theory, Violence, and Horror in World Politics. His work has appeared in Millennium, Journal of International Political Theory, International Political Sociology, and Philosophy and Social Criticism.

Introduction: Race War and the Global Racial Imaginary Chapter One: Interpreting the Haitian Revolution: Global Racial Hierarchy and War in the 19th Century Chapter Two: Scientific Racism, Social Darwinism and Global Racial Order Chapter Three: Global Racial Violence: Settler Colonialism and the American Indian Wars Chapter Four: Race Annihilation, War and the Global Imperial Order: The Armenian Genocide of 1915 Chapter Five: Nazi Grand Strategy, Genocide and Dismantlement of the State-System, 1941-1945 Chapter Six: The "Yellow Peril" and the Asia-Pacific War Chapter Seven: Racial Violence in the Global South: Vietnam and the Crisis of the American Liberal Order Chapter Eight: Civilizational Conflict as Race War: From the 1990s to the Global War on Terror Chapter Nine: The "Great Replacement": Racial War in the Twenty-First Century