01/11/2021 1 Still Avoiding Armageddon: Neglected Antecedents and the Future Promise of Australian Normative IR Theory 1 Toni Erskine Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU Toni.Erskine@anu.edu.au This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs 2021, Vol. 75, No. 6, 1-18. Introduction Despite a wealth of research on the history and evolving state of the discipline of International Relations (IR) in Australia (Miller 1983; Indyk 1985; Higgott and George 1990; Cotton 2013; Devetak 2009; Devetak and Higgott 2009), Australian contributions to the sub-field of ‘normative IR theory’ have been largely ignored. 2 One might surmise that this is because Australian scholars have not traditionally made significant contributions to what has been a predominantly British body of scholarship. I want to challenge this possible conclusion. Australian IR scholars played a fundamental role in the early development of normative IR theory. Not only did they make pioneering contributions to normative IR theory as it became recognised as a discrete sub-field within IR, but among the ranks of prominent Australian IR scholars writing before the emergence of this new sub-field are those whose work reveals strong affinities with, and provided pivotal points of departure for, this body of scholarship. In short, Australian scholars have made – and continue to make – a crucial contribution to the evolution of normative IR theory. In defending this case, I will take three steps. First, I will introduce ‘normative IR theory’ and briefly recount its emergence as a distinct and self-aware area of study about forty years ago, refining the story of its genesis by recognising pioneering Australian contributions. Second, and perhaps less conventionally for an article on normative IR theory, I will turn to the previous 1 I am grateful to James Blackwell, Chris Brown, Liane Hartnett, Cian O’Driscoll, Brendan Taylor, and Xueyin Zha for incisive written comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to Ian Clark, Luke Glanville, Andrew Linklater and Ben Zala for valuable discussions on particular points. I am also indebted to Brendan Taylor for sharing Coral Bell’s unpublished papers with me. The phrase ‘avoiding Armageddon’ is taken from Bell’s (2012a, 1, 23) own description of what motivated her scholarship – and also appears in the title of a superb chapter on Bell by Hugh White (2014). 2 Qualified exceptions can be found in the following valuable studies: Devetak (2009, 357-9) and Devetak and Higgott (2009, 274- 5). However, in both cases ‘normative theorising’ is understood to encompass more than the particular subfield that I am addressing here. I will touch on this point below.