Scars of the empire

This dissertation argues that states that have undergone a transformative historical event should be treated as a separate category of actors with unique patterns of behavior--patterns determined not by the classic realist goals of maximizing security and material capability, but by the historically-influenced phenomenon of strategic ideology. As a primary case study it shows that states such as China and India that have undergone the transformative historical event of extractive colonialism, have developed a particular type of strategic ideology that can be called "post-imperial ideology" (PII) and that is driven by three national goals, the most prominent of which is the desire to be acknowledged and empathized with, in the international system, as a victim. It suggests that PII accounts for important foreign policy decisions taken by China and India that do not conform to mainstream theories of international relations. Analysts agree that the foreign policy choices of China and India are a critical determinant of regional and global stability and security in the twenty first century. The PII model offers a new method of analyzing their distinctive behavior by including them in a category of states not characterized solely by material capabilities and by de-mystifying them from recurrent analyses as unique examples of the inscrutable East. This dissertation uses their different but equally intense colonial histories to show how PII stems from an emphasis on past suffering and influences key foreign policy decisions.