Discourses of empire: the US ‘empire’, globalisation and international relations

The contemporary normalisation of discussing United States foreign policy in terms of imperialism and empire is of great interest to all scholars of international relations, and the purpose of the present article is to analyse this trend in terms of the broader context of the role of empire in international relations theorising. There is a deeper logic to the recognition of a truly imperial republic than just contemporary foreign policy, as the US as empire seems to convey a richer understanding and a deeper resonance of America's contemporary role. What is also striking are the ties between empire and globalisation, which are increasingly being recognised. The use of imperial language as a more general discourse questions the dominant assumptions in international relations concerning the state of anarchy in the international system, without abandoning the dynamics of power and coercion that are part and parcel of imperial relationships, which can help to convey a richer sense of the dynamics of the international realm.     

The nexus between vulnerabilities and violence in the Caribbean*

Abstract

This article analyses the nexus between the Caribbean’s manifold vulnerabilities and the direct and structural violence evident throughout the region’s history. It argues that Caribbean states are threatened not only by direct violence but also by the structural violence permeating in impoverished and marginalised sectors of the state–society complex. Both forms of violence are attributable to the historical legacy of colonisation, to US paternalism and hegemonic dominance in the post-colonial era, and to the persistence of the coloniality of power, even after Caribbean states won their independence from European imperial powers. Today, the region is, per capita, one of the most violent areas on the globe. Evidence of concatenated violence is growing across this region, demonstrating the difficulty small underdeveloped states have in addressing threats to their security, independence, economic viability, and continued existence in the intermestic environment within which they operate.     

The Globalisation of Enclosure: interrogating the geopolitics of empire

This article examines the question of global order in the contemporary historical conjuncture. I argue that Hardt and Negri's Empire provides a response to such a question. This response is necessary given the manner in which globalisation theory's explanation of global order has been contested by the George W Bush regime. An exegesis of the manner in which Empire delineates global order in the contemporary era provides, moreover, a fruitful encounter between elements of post-structuralist International Relations theory and the subject matter of International Political Economy. The article sketches out the principal characteristics of empire followed by an exegesis of the empirical manifestation of imperial characteristics in the contemporary global order. I argue that the present global order is characterised by the drawing of boundaries or the constitution of thresholds that define what is to be regarded as included and excluded from the imperial realm. Empire vigorously polices these thresholds in order to defer encounters with others that might question its self-asserted timeless pacific civility. Finally, I conclude by noting that the centrality of such boundary constitution to imperial forms suggests that a logic of security underlies contemporary global order. Thus investigations into the political economy of Empire will always already comprise an investigation of imperial logics of security.     

Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas

While accounts of the end of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires have often stressed the rise of Turkish and German nationalisms, narratives of the Romanov collapse have generally not portrayed Russian nationalism as a key factor. In fact, scholars have either stressed the weaknesses of Russian national identity in the populace or the generally pragmatic approach of the government, which, as Hans Rogger classically phrased it, “opposed all autonomous expressions of nationalism, including the Russian.” In essence, many have argued, the regime was too conservative to embrace Russian nationalism, and it most often “subordinated all forms of the concept of nationalism to the categories of dynasty and empire.” Recently, two authors have challenged the predominantly pessimistic portrayals of the extent of Russian national identity in late imperial Russia, focusing on peasant responses to the First World War. Scott Seregny makes a strong case that while peasants may not have been full “Russians” by 1914, the spread of politics and literacy to the countryside through the zemstvos was rapidly integrating peasants into a broader civic identity. Josh Sanborn argues that even though responses were varied and in fact protest against the war quite frequent, the important thing is that both positive and negative responses were expressed within a single national political framework and discourse. In response, S. A. Smith grants that the war strengthened rather than weakened national identity, but thinks Sanborn and Seregny underestimate the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916, concluding that “by the summer of 1917, politics had become polarized between an imperial language of nation, used mainly by the privileged and educated strata, an anti-imperial language, used mainly by the elites of the non-Russian nationalities, and a language of class, used mainly by the subaltern classes.”     

Rethinking the Imperial Difference: towards an understanding of US–Latin American encounters

In this article the imperial is envisaged in terms of a multifaceted terrain of analysis that can encourage us to pose a number of interrelated questions. Five issues are identified for discussion. First, the differential way cultural studies and Marxist political economy approaches interpret the imperial present is assessed. Second, the why and how of imperial power are subjected to debate. Third, the overlapping inside and outside of imperialism are identified and analysed. Fourth, the newness of today's ‘new imperialism’ is highlighted and critically examined and, fifth, in relation to the evolving geopolitics of knowledge, some reflections are offered on the significance of the imperial in global times. The context is predominantly provided by US–Latin American encounters.     

Killing the Third World: civilisational security as US grand strategy

Abstract

This article disputes explanations of American expansionism that are based on the requirements of national security or more abstract theories such as the balance of power. In contradistinction to the imperatives of defence and survival, the article shows how civilisational factors weighed heavily on the emergence of US grand strategy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In particular assumptions about the peoples of the Third World being lesser played an important role in the conception and legitimation of imperial expansion. During this period, the US Navy went through a dramatic build-up. The article shows the ways in which the worldviews of many of the key players (such as Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt) contributed to the militarisation of global racism, a development that led to widespread killing in the Philippines and elsewhere.     

The ghost of essentialism and the trap of binarism: six theses on the Soviet empire

This article endeavors to open a new critical space for Soviet studies and for nationalities studies more generally. Through analyses of recent trends in Soviet studies, the article dismantles the frequently used opposition between subjective and objective approaches to Soviet empire and suggests instead that truths and categories, whether considered “subjective” or “objective,” are constructed discursively, through legitimizing certain interpretive models over the others. The article also argues against disciplinary avoidance of “what is” questions (e.g. “what is a nation?”) and claims that an excessive concern for (re)producing essentialism should not hinder scholarly inquiry. Several new lines of inquiry for the study of the Soviet empire are suggested and also applicable in nationalities studies more generally: research on the role of symbolic violence in manufacturing consent and research concerning the role of affect in producing linkages between the performative life of a singular human being and the pedagogical discourse of a nation or empire. The article also offers an analysis of the Soviet Union as an empire in becoming and it advocates for postcolonial approaches within Soviet studies. The practical dimensions of Soviet rule are exemplified with data from the Baltic borderlands in the postwar years.     

The Rise of Militant Islam and the Security State in the Era of the ‘Long War’

This paper distinguishes between political and militant Islam and analyses the latter's current ability to confront empire and to become a social force in Muslim-majority states. This analysis is within the dialectic of collaboration and resistance, starting with client postcolonial states' pivotal role in bringing to fruition the collaboration between political Islam and US imperialism during the cold war era. The post-cold war period signals the imperialist putsch to confront militant Islam in the ‘Long War’ by employing the cold war strategy of ‘permanent war’ and universalising the idea of the security state. Militant Islam's resistance to the Long War and the security state makes this two-pronged imperial strategy a losing proposition for the USA. Paradoxically this strategy has also become the prime mover for militant Islam's ascendancy. The paper addresses the paradox of the USA's continuation with its losing Long War strategy and securitisation agenda which, although providing succour to militant Islam, is also achieving its larger objectives to buttress capitalist globalism; fuel the military–industrial and security–industrial complexes; and support ‘big oil’.     

The Intersections of Class,Gender, Sexuality and ‘Race’: The Political Economy of Gendered Violence

This article focuses on rethinking the intersectional approach towards a greater framing within the new political economy and particularly concerns itself with the ways such an approach can contribute to theorising various manifestations of gendered violence. The article examines a range of different forms of violence and reflects on how an intersectional framing can inform our understanding better. Some of the intersectional dimensions to domestic violence, rape and sexual assault, honour-based crimes and trafficking are discussed.     

Dugin,Eurasianism, and Central Asia

Eurasianism as a concept emerged among Russian émigrés in the 1920s, with the premise that Russia is a unique ethnic blend, primarily of Slavic and Turkic peoples. Its geopolitical implications for Russia include gravitation toward mostly Turkic Central Asia. Alexander Dugin, one of its best-known proponents, believes that the demise of the Soviet Union was simply a tragic incident. The people of the former USSR should again be united in a grand Eurasian empire, with Russia a benign and generous patron, providing its “younger brothers” clients economic largesse and defense, mostly against the predatory USA. The “orange revolutions” and the rise of Russian nationalism, for whose proponents a restored imperial presence is rather marginal, indicate that Eurasianism—along with the dream of the resurrection of the USSR—is becoming less viable.     

American Power,East Asian Regionalism and Emerging Powers: in or against empire?

Recent years have seen a revival of discussions on American decline. This paper intervenes in this debate by suggesting that there is a tendency towards partial conceptualisations of US power. It suggests a new historical materialist perspective that makes it possible to theorise American Empire as a relational social totality embedded within global capitalism. The paper then analyses the social limits of China’s rise and the integration of East Asian regionalisation into American Empire, suggesting the extent to which world power has shifted east has tended to be overestimated. It also analyses the emergence of Brazil, India, and the brics meetings, suggesting these developments have a limited, but overstated, capacity to challenge American Empire.     

From Borderland to Heartland: The Discourse of the North-West in Early Republican China

Abstract

The issue of the North-West, its developmental potential and significance as a national place, gained great attention in early and mid-1930s China. Early twentieth-century Chinese understandings of the North-West as a geographical region derived from Qing imperial order in the Inner Asian frontier lands of the empire but the term became more complex semantically in the Republic and by the 1930s it had gained a range of different meanings. Such complexity bespoke some of the tensions involved in conceptualizing the relationship between former Qing Inner Asian frontier lands and the Chinese heartland within the new territorial form of the Chinese Republic. This article traces changing meanings and uses of the term from the late Qing into the 1930s. It identifies and examines key areas of its discursive content and reveals the growing centrality of ideas of the frontier and North-West in Chinese nationalist discourse. This research highlights the importance of the frontier in post-imperial Chinese visions of the nation.     

What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with empire?

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently disparate debates in the fields of politics and International Relations. The first is a debate over celebrity humanitarianism that is divided between optimistic scholars, who see in it an enhancement of democracy, and pessimistic scholars, who link it to capitalist imperialism or a throwback to older colonial tropes. The second is a debate over a (new) American empire which has prompted scholars in IR to redress IR’s historic ‘elision’ of empire and to offer new network theories of empire. The paper argues that these two debates each address the shortcomings in the other and offers speculation on what celebrity humanitarianism might have to do with empire by bridging the connections between structuralist political theories of empire and the cultural accounts offered by postcolonial theory.     

CONCEIVING THE “WEST”: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY VISIONS OF KHAM

Abstract

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the Tibetan plateau in the eyes of the gentry and officials of Sichuan Province was little more than a defensive fence bolting the back door of the empire. Although a stone stele erected in 1727 proclaimed much of the Kham region of ethnographic Tibet to be under Sichuan's jurisdiction, its invested rulers were administered by a “loose rein” policy, leaving its polities effectively independent of Chinese authority, the borderland and its inhabitants being of little interest to the Qing state. Yet the turn of the nineteenth century marked the reenvisioning of the once-barren borderland as a resource-rich terrain worthy of industrial development and inhabited by a population in need of cultural transformation. This article examines the convergence of local and regional dangers and opportunities with the influence of absolutist notions of two newly globalizing norms, territoriality and sovereignty, a convergence that fostered this new vision of Kham as integral to the burgeoning Chinese state and nation. The ramifications of this transformation in perceptions of the former imperial frontier as “West” would resonate across China's western interior throughout the twentieth century.     

China: alternative futures

What alternatives are available to China in the next one or two decades? `More of the same' is not a likely scenario, because one-party rule is not optimal for coping with the challenges of modernization and global interdependence. A second model, Singapore's authoritarian capitalism, appeals to many CCP leaders. But Singapore's scale and way of life are so different that its example cannot be very relevant to China. Nor does the Soviet imperial model fit, because China does not suffer from imperial overreach as did the USSR. The post-Soviet Russian model—a move from rigid hierarchy to free enterprise anarchy—could await China. Both countries have lacked institutions of civil society that could stabilize the country if central authority collapses. Another alterative would be a return to regionalism, spurred by economic and ethnic differences within China. Some PRC leaders hope to find a Chinese way that transcends other models, but this is not realistic. The most useful model for China and the world would be a gradual transition from authoritarianism to multi-party democracy, as has taken place in Taiwan. In one or two decades, China could edge in that direction. If so, animosities between the mainland and Taiwan would also diminish, removing a thorn from U.S.–Chinese relations. Opportunities for mutual gain may then overshadow present tensions.     

Russian and Ukrainian elites: A comparative study of different identities and alternative transitions

The deterioration in Russian-Ukrainian relations heightened in 2014 but did not begin then and has deeper roots. Both Russian presidents have had troubled relations with all five Ukrainian presidents irrespective if they were described as ‘nationalist’ or ‘pro-Russian.’ This article is the first to explain why the roots of the crisis go deeper and it does this by investigating three areas. The first is the different sources of elites in 1991 when independent Russia captured Soviet institutions and undertook top-down state building while Ukraine inherited far less and set course with bottom up state-building. The second is divergent Russian and Ukrainian national identities. The third is the resultant different transitions with Russia reverting to great power imperial nationalism and Ukraine quadruple and post-colonial transitions.     

MAO’S ROLE IN THE KOREAN CONFLICT: A REVISION

Abstract

In October 1950, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was only one year old, and the Beijing regime faced daunting tasks of regime consolidation and economic reconstruction. Thus, the CIA consistently predicted that China would not enter the Korean War, even if the United States crossed the 38th parallel. Acting on the CIA’s prediction, US forces invaded North Korea on October 8, 1950. China proved the CIA’s analysis wrong by sending masses of troops into Korea late in October, pushing the US force back south of the 38th parallel before the end of 1950. This article uncovers historical evidence to revise the existing literature on the topic of the Chinese intervention in Korea. Why did China intervene despite all the odds against Beijing? This study demonstrates the historical role of “agents,” that is, individual with various personal attributes. By using newly available sources from China and Russia as well as a new interpretation, this article breaks new ground on a significant topic in the fields of international relations and the Cold War international history.     

Gender tropes and colonial discourses in the turbulence of global finance

This article seeks to prick the pretension of neutrality and objectivity in finance as a knowledge construct and regime of power. It does this by focusing on how constructions of risk, the deployment of ‘otherizing’ discourses and, importantly, the mobilization of gender and colonial tropes assisted(s) not only in the normalization of financial practices but also the imperial order of Western-derived financial governance institutions as well.     

新世纪两岸对台湾文学诠释权的争夺——以“反攻”大陆学者写的《台湾文学史》为例

某些台湾作家在新世纪对大陆学者撰写的《台湾文学史》或分类史所做的“反攻”,主要是出版《台湾新文学史》或类文学史的著作,对“台湾文学是中国文学一个组成部分”、“反共文学”是一种逝去的文学、“皇民文学”就是汉奸文学的观点作出反弹。他们从政治上和学理上清算大陆学者的台湾文学史观时,还把岛内的统派学者“捆绑”在一起．。代表人物有钟肇政、陈芳明、林瑞明、谢辉煌。