Adam Watson and the structure of the Cold War international society: power structure versus social structure

Nowhere can Adam Watson’s contribution to English School literature be observed better than in his seminal work, The Evolution of International Society, in which he argued that Cold War global international society included two separate sub-global international societies led by the USA and the Soviet Union, respectively. Despite his acknowledgement that the newly established states that emerged from colonialism constituted the majority of the members of international society, he nevertheless did not consider the ‘Third World’ as constituting a third, separate sub-global international society, thereby providing an incomplete picture of the social structure of global international society. To address this omission, this essay examines the social structure of Cold War international society by focusing on the role of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). It argues that during the Cold War, the NAM reflected the existence of a sub-global international society in the sense that its member states were conscious of certain common interests, common values, and conceived themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and shared in the working of common institutions, such as sovereignty and non-intervention, diplomacy, human equality, development and trade, anti-hegemonialism and disarmament, and nationalism and self-determination.