The Three-Body Problem and International Relations, livre ebook

An introduction to key concepts in international relations and strategy through the interstellar narratives of Cixin Liu’s Hugo Award–winning trilogy

Science fiction has long examined social, political, and moral issues through imagined worlds. This book uses Chinese author Cixin Liu’s award-winning trilogy as a teaching tool to illustrate complex theories of international relations. Comprising the novels The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End, the trilogy has been recognized for the ways in which, over a galactic scale of time and space, the stories explore how civilizations see each other and engage in strategic conflict.

In this book, leading scholars draw on key moments from the trilogy to help demonstrate complex concepts such as deterrence, diplomacy, negotiation, competition, agency, game theory, colonialism, and feminist theory, as well as multiple levels of military strategy. By linking these stories to global politics and strategy, both on Earth and in space, “The Three-Body Problem” and International Relations offers an engaging, accessible introduction to concepts humans currently grapple with in the realms of global politics, foreign policy, and strategy.

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

1. Introduction
James Wesley Hutto and Wendy N. Whitman Cobb

2. Mainland Chinese Science Fiction: A Play in Four Acts
Sale Lilly

3. Chinese Strategic Perspectives on the Three-Body Problem
Shanshan Mei

Part I: 3BP and the Discipline of IR

4. Mearsheimer’s Universe Is a Dark Forest: Offensive Realism as a Motivating Framework for Three-Body
James Wesley Hutto

5. Prisoners, Colonists, or MAD Actors? The Changing Character of Payoff Structures in Remembrance of Earth’s Past
Tim Bettis

6. Wallfacers, Domestic Politics, and Extinction: The Limits of Realism in Intergalactic Politics
Michael A. Allen and Robert Herold

7. Is Thucydides Useful in Space? Earth as a Small State in The Three-Body Problem
Máté Szalai

8. Deterrence, but in Space: What Cosmic Deterrence Tells Us About Coercion
Jean-François Bélanger

Part II: 3BP and the Practice of International Politics

9. Sophons, Wallfacers, Swordholders, and the Cosmic Safety Notice: Strategic Thought in Chinese Science Fiction
Wendy N. Whitman Cobb

10. Strategic Insights from the Three-Body Trilogy: Ten Lessons for Navigating a Complex Universe
Gregory D. Miller

11. When War Is Not a Duel: The Three-Body Game and the Scientific Way of Warfare
Mark D. Jacobsen

12. Militant Clients and Insurgency: Trisolaris and the Earth-Trisolaris Organization
Luke M. Herrington and Melia Pfannenstiel

13. Technology and Strategy in the Three-Body Problem Trilogy
Jaganath Sankaran

14. Negotiation and Diplomacy in the Three-Body Problem Trilogy
Roni Kay M. O’Dell

Part III: Critical Readings

15. Taiwan and the Glutton Sea
Dante K. Earle

16. Feminist Perspectives on Three-Body: Deterrence, Credibility, and the Portrayal of Women
Wendy N. Whitman Cobb

17. Chinese Developmentalism and the Geopolitics of Remembrance of Earth’s Past
Aleš Karmazin

18. Reading Three-Body as Utopian International Thought
Stephen Benedict Dyson

List of Contributors

Index