How terrorism ends – and does not end: the Basque case

ABSTRACT

This article examines the end of ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna “Euskadi and Freedom”) in the light of the literature on “how terrorism ends”. Was it the result of police repression, defeat, negotiation, elimination, tactical success? Was it the result of military failure but not defeat? What role did the rebellion of its own social base play? Was it, in the end, a case of political transformation? The discourse of “unilateralism” developed by the Basque Nationalist Left is examined. The role of international actors and the so-called “virtual diplomacy” is situated in the context of the State and the global order. But did ETA really end? Four years after ETA declared its unconditional ceasefire, and after the international media considered it finished, the Spanish government does not think so. In conclusion, the article considers the lessons that derive from the Basque case regarding the issues of how terrorist groups end.     

From Population Control to Reproductive Rights: Understanding Normative Change in Global Population Policy (1965–1994)

This article examines the process of normative change and nascent norm emergence in areas of global policy making through the convening of UN global conferences. Specifically, the article is a case study of how the norms and discourse undergirding and legitimising global population policy have changed from population control to reproductive rights through the passing decades. The United Nations, as a main site of discursive and normative contestation, provides opportunities for global social movements to lodge oppositional claims against states and other actors in world politics. A constructivist approach is used to identify five processes integral to understanding mutually constitutive and fluid agent-structure processes of normative change and nascent norm emergence in global population policy. This research contributes to the extant constructivist literature on the process of norm emergence by suggesting one processual model that can illuminate other cases of norm formation, maintenance, and change regarding other transnational issues.     

Cyber insecurity as a national threat: overreaction from Germany,France and the UK?

Abstract

This article analyses the development of the European Union (EU) as a global actor in the area of climate security. Building on this, it explicitly draws on constructivist concepts such as norm entrepreneurship and epistemic communities. To this end, it adopts the framework of epistemic communities, as developed by Peter Haas, in order to suggest that there is a group of EU officials, EU member states and think-tank activists, who drive the climate security agenda of the EU. Thus, it examines the precise actors involved in this EU epistemic community for climate security. This group promotes a reason for action at the global level, resulting in the attempt to diffuse this norm: climate change has consequences for international security; thus, it requires the development of appropriate policies and capabilities within the EU and globally. This article suggests that the epistemic community on climate security has been effective at diffusing this norm at both levels, albeit with differences.     

American Perspectives on the Transatlantic Security Agenda

This article explores US perspectives on the new transatlantic security agenda in the context of the evolution of strategic culture. The war on terrorism and the Iraq War of 2003 serve as focal points to examine sources of divergence and convergence between US and European security policies. The article explores key questions including: Have we seen the collapse of a shared, transatlantic security culture since September 11? How have US leaders manipulated strategic cultures to achieve security objectives in the new era? Why has the Bush administration willingly engaged (and even encouraged) the intra-European divide? How significant to the United States is the shift in “old” and “new” European perspectives on the war on terrorism? The article concludes with an assessment of the implications of recent events for the future of transatlantic security ties.     

The security-prejudice nexus: “Islamist” terrorism and the structural logics of Islamophobia in the UK

ABSTRACT

A growing body of evidence documents that Islamophobia is a significant social issue in the UK. This evidence also reveals an empirical link to “Islamist” terrorism, revealing a nexus between security and the social emergence of prejudice. Drawing on critical approaches to security and applying them to the case of the UK in 2017, this article explores this nexus conceptually and empirically. To do so, it examines the discourses of various governance institutions (including the media, the political elite, and security professionals) as they respond to “Islamist” terrorist events. It argues that these governance institutions individually and collectively – and often unwittingly – stigmatised and securitised “Muslim” identity. The structural emergence (i.e., the institutionalisation) of Islamophobia in the UK, this article contends, can largely be understood through these processes. This article therefore offers an illustration of some of the logics of how prejudice is embedded in societal structures, which has normative implications for how these processes might be successfully contested.     

Resilience as the new EU foreign policy paradigm: a pragmatist turn?

This article examines the rise of resilience discourses in EU foreign policy. The European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) refers to building state and societal resilience in its neighbourhood as one of the key strategic priorities of the EU. This article argues that the discourse of resilience that permeates the EUGS chimes well with a pragmatist turn in social sciences and global governance. The EUGS introduces resilience-building alongside an emphasis on flexibility, tailor-made approaches and the need for local ownership, capacity-building and comprehensiveness. More importantly, the new EUGS proposes “principled pragmatism” as a new operating principle in its foreign policy. While this might suggest a more pragmatic EU foreign policy, a closer examination of the EUGS discourse reveals significant tensions between a pragmatic and a principled foreign policy, which undermine the added value of resilience-building as a new foreign policy paradigm.     

The “Somalinisation” of terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya: the case of refoulement

Kenya’s state discourse on terrorism and counterterrorism securitises Somali refugees and refugee camps. Using the securitisation theory, a perspective of social constructivism as a theoretical framework, the article attempts to establish the relationship between the securitisation of Somali refugees and refugee camps and refoulement as a measure to counter the securitisation. The arguments raised are the speech acts of Kenya’s securitising actors expressed in the terrorism discourse present Somali refugees and refugee camps as existential threats to peace and security in the country. Consequently, their speech acts expressed in the counterterrorism discourse present non-refoulement of the refugees as an existential threat to national security so as to justify, to the targeted audience, the adoption of refoulement, a norm-violating measure, to counter the fear of the threat of terrorism from Somali refugees and refugee camps. Terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya have, therefore, been “Somalinised”. The conclusion offers ways of preventing the “Somalinisation” of terrorism and counterterrorism in Kenya.     

From a Sub-Continental Power to an Asia-Pacific Player: India’s Changing Identity

This article aims to argue that identity is an important variable in determining the motivational disposition of the Indian state’s external security behavior. It offers a constructivist explanation to India’s increasing engagement with the Asia-Pacific region and argues that India’s deepening engagement with the region is a reflection of its desire to craft a new external identity for itself – the identity of an “Asia-Pacific player.” The desire for an “Asia-Pacific identity” is in part precipitated by Indian political elite’s perception of a crisis in India’s external identity immediately after the end of the Cold War, along with its intuitive desire for recognition within the international system. This ongoing identity shift offers to explain many visible changes in India’s post-Cold War foreign security behavior.     

A no-displacement option? Rights,risks and negotiated settlement in development displacement

“Voluntary” land transfer agreements, negotiated directly between “willing buyers and willing sellers”, present a seemingly empowering alternative to the use of legal instruments for land acquisition or transfer which entail forced displacement. Yet asymmetrical bargaining power between the negotiating parties can undermine the fairness of negotiated outcomes and the right of the sellers to a “no-displacement” option. Viewed against a complex background of bourgeoning land transfers in multiple sites, this article examines rights-based and risks-based approaches to negotiated settlements, concluding that measures to address asymmetries in bargaining power must look beyond enhanced negotiation procedures to address underlying social and political dimensions.     

India and the dialectics of domestic and international “land grabbing”: Historical perspectives,current debates,and the case of Ethiopia

International land “acquisition” or land “grabbing” has become a global phenomenon in which India plays an increasingly important role. While there is a critical domestic debate regarding land deals within India — especially pertaining to the provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2014 — there is practically no such debate regarding international land deals by Indian companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. By applying a two-level discourse analysis, this article argues that the land discourse within India can be understood as a strategy of exclusion. By linking land issues with questions of “development,” the discursive strategies of powerful actors lead to the exclusion of the arguments of NGOs and others opposed to the land deals from the discourse within India. This strategy of exclusion is then taken to the extreme with the strategy of securitization outside India: land deals are linked to “food security,” as the example of Ethiopia highlights.     

Scarce Differences: Toward a Material and Systemic Foundation for Offensive and Defensive Realism

A divide has opened up between offensive and defensive realism as to the relative scarcity of security in the international system, with powerful implications for the vision each approach offers about the nature of international politics. Yet we still do not understand why the two diverge given their common neorealist foundations. This article reviews implicit, explicit, and other potential explanations of that difference—the relationship between power and security, the offense-defense balance, the prevalence and efficiency of balancing vs. bandwagoning, and the role played by uncertainty in decision-making—and finds them lacking in their ability to provide an adequate account that is systemic and structural in nature, does not violate arguments the scholars have made in practice, and does not confuse cause with effect. Finding prior efforts lacking, this article proposes that the distinction could be logically rooted in material scarcity, a familiar theme in realism historically that has been ignored in more recent formulations. Drawing a distinction between a “dangerous world” in which uncertainty is the core problem and a “competitive world” in which scarcity bedevils state relations helps explain where offensive and defensive realism both diverge and converge.     

Who speaks for the European border security industry? A network analysis

This article contributes to the literature on the European border security industry with a network analysis of a new bipartite data set. The network is composed of speakers and their speech topics at a European border security conference taking place from 2008 to 2015. Speakers are linked to conferences by year of attendance and to speech topics to identify key actors and discourses using measures of centrality. A multiple regression quadratic assignment procedure (MR-QAP) is used to explain the continuity of conference speech topics. The centrality analysis reveals a number of “hubs” and the discourse analysis reveals a consistent focus on social control and surveillance over human rights. The MR-QAP regression suggests that shared discourses are driven by organisations which act as key speakers at many events, and whose discourses are prioritised over those of other actors. The article concludes with notes on the critical implications of the findings.     

Deconstructing the “Deep State”: Subordinate Bureaucratic Politics in U.S. National Security

Does America really have a national security “deep state”? If by this loaded term we simply mean a sprawling bureaucracy filled mostly by a permanent cadre of lower-level officials, then inarguably the answer is yes. But how much influence does this so-called “deep state” exert, and to what ends? This debate conspicuously lacks for useful academic insight about the “real” deep state. For various reasons, the international relations field of foreign policy analysis (FPA) has largely neglected to study the role, motivation, and influence of lower-level bureaucrats. We seek to redress this knowledge gap by suggesting a new conceptual paradigm of subordinate bureaucratic politics to augment existing models for explaining American national security decisions. This additional lens enriches the analytic toolkit of FPA by revealing hitherto underappreciated dynamics including intra- and trans-agency bargaining, the key role of issue-driven interest coalitions, and persistent divisions such as between regional and functional issues.     

Norms from the periphery: tracing the rise of the common but differentiated principle in international environmental politics

Abstract

Over the last three decades, constructivist scholars of international relations have created a rich body of literature on the influence of global norms. Until recently, the vast majority of that work focused on norms originating in the developed world and neglected the ideational impact of developing countries. This article confronts this oversight in the literature by tracing the rise of the “common but differentiated responsibility” (CBDR) norm in international environmental politics. The CBDR principle traces its origins to the developing world and today it is part of the framework principles of international environmental agreements. Thus, it represents a global norm promoted by, rather than diffused to, the developing world. In the process of tracing this norm’s rise, this article generates a set of hypotheses about the conditions under which developing countries create global norms.     

“Flexible” capital accumulation in Islamic State social media

This article explores online social media produced by the neo-jihadist group “Islamic State” (IS) from a political-economic perspective. Using a framework developed by anthropologist David Harvey, it examines how IS social media operates within depoliticised neoliberal environments characterised by “flexible” regimes of capital accumulation. It explicates how IS acquires political-economic capital by evoking “spectacle”, “fashion” and a “commodification of cultural forms”. Drawing from Christian Fuchs’ informational theory, the article also considers the roles of agency and competition in accumulation processes where “knowledge and technology reinforce each other”. By revealing how IS both constitutes and is constituted by its flexible approach to social media, the article seeks to illuminate avenues for better understanding neo-jihadist ideations.     

McDonaldisation of Sovereignty: A Foucauldian Analysis of Responsibility to Protect

The importance of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has typically been attributed either to its character as a presumed new norm (normative ontology) or to its capacity to influence international politics by mobilising political actors to protect civilians through military interventions and other forms of intervention (causal ontology), as witnessed in the recent cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. This article will argue for an additional model of explanation, according to which the main significance of RtoP might best be understood by reference to its character as a political statement of global policy networks (discursive ontology) calling for the reinterpretation of the sovereignty regime. The article will apply Michel Foucault's theory of discursive fields to demonstrate that RtoP beneficially introduces human security as an additional criterion of state sovereignty, thus contributing to the “humanitarisation of sovereignty”. However, RtoP also engenders “McDonaldisation of sovereignty” and “sovereignty-consumption” mentality in that it attempts to transform and homogenise pluralistic state sovereigns into a universal, seemingly humanitarian mould. As a drawback, this McDonaldisation process excludes some victimised groups from the remit of international concern.     

Living Up to a New Role in the World: The Challenges of “Global Britain”

Theresa May promised a new role for the United Kingdom in the world, dubbed “Global Britain.” But what challenges arise from supposedly being more open to the world while decoupling from the European Union? This article explores how much the UK can meet the expectations stemming from a new, unabashedly global posture. Examining the rhetoric of British foreign policy since 1945 is juxtaposed against the emerging language of global openness after Brexit to illustrate what the UK's partners might expect for trade, security, and global governance. In evaluating the strategic benefits of using the rhetoric of globalism after EU withdrawal, this article examines the British state's capacity to find the administrative resources, public expenditure, and elite consensus necessary to redefine the country's position in world affairs. While the political expediency of devising a new role cannot be faulted, the strategic value of “Global Britain” appears limited in light of this analysis.     

The Path to Political Substance: Exploring the Mediated Discourse Surrounding Controversial Media Texts

This article proceeds from the assumption that entertainment texts—particularly controversial ones—function in a broad intertextual field and that their political significance does not lie solely in their value as stand-alone texts, or in their direct influence on political knowledge, attitudes, opinions, and behaviors, but in their ability to instigate politically relevant discussions in other media venues. Focusing on the mediated discourse surrounding two controversial U.S. docudramas, The Reagans and The Path to 9/11, this study examines the political qualities of the public discourse surrounding these docudramas in the U.S. news media and investigates which factors were significant predictors of political substance in this discourse. Based on a distinction between “issue substance” and “media substance” as the two major types of political substance that emerge in the discourse surrounding controversial texts, the analysis demonstrates how these types of political substance varied across the two docudramas and across various dimensions of the discourse, among them the time in which the discussion took place. The analytical framework presented in this article is offered as a platform for future examinations of the contribution of media-centered political scandals to public discourse, the conditions under which entertainment texts spur substantive political discussions, and the complex interactions between journalism, entertainment, and politics in contemporary media environments.     

人工智能时代背景下的国家安全治理：应用范式、风险识别与路径选择

作为新一轮科技革命和产业变革的核心驱动力量,人工智能技术的发展与应用在为社会提供强大发展动力的同时,也对国家安全治理造成了一系列影响。实际上,人工智能技术与国家安全之间存在一种结构性互动的关系。一方面,人工智能技术能够基于进化赋能的实践应用,从传统安全、非传统安全以及两者间的重叠领域,为国家安全提供更为有效的维护和保障机制;另一方面,人工智能技术的应用也存在着超出预期设想的可能性。因此,人工智能在国家安全治理中的应用就极易在"界域与有效性""效能与可靠性"以及"竞争与稳定性"之间出现矛盾。尤其是在因人工智能技术嵌入所导致的力量失衡以及安全格局的转变下,国家安全就极有可能在国家竞争的稳定性、社会治理的有序性与技术应用的稳定性三方面遭受巨大的冲击。需要指出的是,目前人工智能技术所导致的国家安全风险已经逐步显现,而全面评估人工智能技术对国家安全治理带来的机遇与挑战将是解决这一技术安全悖论的关键所在。为此,中国应在紧抓人工智能技术发展契机的同时,更要加强对这一技术发展潜在风险的研判和预防,从而维护好中国的国家安全与人民利益。