Fear, Hierarchy, and Violence: The Global Racial Imaginary in Barder’s Global Race War (2021)

Within his 2021 publication Global Race War: International Politics and Racial Hierarchy, Dr. Alexander Barder poses a fundamental challenge to traditional theories of international relations. While mainstream perspectives rely heavily on the concept of anarchy to explain international conflict and the global order, Barder argues that the state of international relations is instead defined by hierarchy – particularly, a racial hierarchy produced and reproduced over the course of centuries through discourses of fear, white supremacy, and race-based violence. This review essay points to some of the key theoretical assertions and historical examples developed throughout Barder’s text, which stands as an exceptional piece of scholarship that argues for a re-evaluation of the flawed histories the West relies upon when conceptualizing the “global”. Barder’s work leaves space for further inquiry into aspects of this hierarchy beyond the racial, but his development of the “global racial imaginary” as the primary ontological framework of the West is especially compelling, as he brings forward key historical moments at which the Western identity became fused with fear of racialized “others” and the necessity of race-based violence – or, global race war.