‘Decisive Victory’ and Israel's Quest For a New Military Strategy

In 2020, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced the development of a new operational concept called Decisive Victory that aimed to change the way Israel fights wars and to redefine victory on the battlefield. The root cause of this change was the evolution in nonstate threats from armed groups in Gaza and Lebanon. The concept was to drive major reforms of the IDF in training, interoperability among the services, weapons procurement, and civil-military relations. However, the efforts encountered significant challenges in terms of politics, financial resources, and the implications for the IDF's force structure. This article examines these developments to shed light on the evolving way of war in the Middle East and the struggle within the IDF to redefine its posture.     

‘We’, ‘they’ and the ‘human’ in the middle: foreign interventions for ‘humanitarian reasons’ during the nineteenth century in Turkish historiography

This paper explores the way in which historiography produced in Turkey (or by Turkish scholars abroad) approaches foreign military/diplomatic interventions in the Ottoman Empire during the long nineteenth century. It focuses on three case studies where ‘humanitarian reasons’ formed the discursive basis/justification of such interventions. The author argues that when the distinction between victims and perpetrators, civilians and combatants, emerges as an interpretive dilemma in the debates of the historical period examined, similar interpretive and normative challenges are inherited by the historiographical accounts of it. The paper distinguishes two contrasting ways in which Turkish historiographical scholarship responds to such a dilemma. The first remains confined by the way Ottomans themselves viewed the world around them and uncritically reproduces rigid categories of selfhood and otherhood between ‘us’ and ‘them’. The second trajectory offers tools for understanding the conflicts behind the construction of the category of the human worth of international protection, and disentangles itself from the normative bind described above.     

Interrogating the Mediterranean ‘Migration Crisis’

This Forum aims to uncover the socio-politics of the ‘migration crisis’ in the Mediterranean. The contributions explore the idea of the ‘migration crisis’ or ‘refugee crisis’ in the Mediterranean from the starting point that as scholars of the Mediterranean we can do two things: one, we can look at the way crisis introduces processes of bordering to our analysis, limiting our gaze and analytical curiosity to a specific space and a specific time; or two, we can take these limits as an opportunity to explore the wider socio-politics, geographies and economies that contribute to producing this so-called ‘crisis’ and in turn what socio-politics, geographies and economies are produced and their implications.     

Who is in the ‘‘We’’? Interrogating the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and Youth Political Participation

Most analyses of the African Union (AU) have focused on the politics of the state and the presidents. There are very few analyses that have focused on aspects such as youth development. The point of departure for this article therefore, is youth development. I argue that although the youth were always part of important historical developments in Africa, they remain on the periphery. In recent times, particularly since the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the AU in the 2000s, the youth development agenda has begun to receive the attention at policy level. In 2015 the AU, through Agenda 2063 went a step further by including youth development into mainstream continental policy frameworks. While we welcome all these developments it has emerged that the continent remains hesitant in the area of youth development. Where the AU and its member states have adopted the discourse of youth inclusion—in cases where youth political participation is often limited, such efforts are not met with fitting institutional and practical policy arrangements. The article posits that the African elite is in for a rude awakening as we have witnessed—since 2011—given the discovery by the African youth of new methods of political participation in post-colonial Africa. The article advocates for the adoption of the African community outlook to youth state policy, argues for the youth to be linked to the project of economic freedom, and implores the African elite to embark on the decolonial project to resolve the bearing coloniality of being, power and knowledge.     

Gennadiy Zyuganov and the ‘Third Road’

Political scientists examine Vladimir Putin's efforts to ensure political control within a regime structure that is formally democratic. Methods for managing factional infighting, concentrating political resources in the "party of power," United Russia, and to limit electoral competition are specified. A Monte Carlo electoral simulation leads to counter-intuitive conclusions about the impact of proportional-representation rules on electoral processes and outcomes. Conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of efforts to institutionalize an authoritarian regime in which shared power is vested in a hegemonic party.     

Why Leipzig? ‘Exit’ and ‘voice’ in the East German revolution

Albert Hirschman's exit‐voice scheme provides a useful starting point for making sense of the East German revolution. Following Hirschman, it is argued that the conjunction of emigration and protest was key to the mass upheaval of 1989. Going beyond Hirschman, however, ‘exit’ is seen as relevant not only as the cumulative effect of individual emigration, but also as a political force in its own right. Different constellations between voice and exit groups then help to explain why the revolutionary upheaval originated not in East Berlin, but in Leipzig.     

From AKP’s ‘Conservative Democracy’ to ‘Advanced Democracy’: Shifts and Challenges in the Debate on ‘Europe’

Abstract

Following the AKP’s victory in the 2002 general elections, ‘conservative democracy’ has emerged as a trademark in Turkish politics, focusing on cosmopolitanism and European integration. In the late 2000s, the party’s favourite notion was ‘advanced democracy’, this time underlining Turkey’s leadership claim in the region and displaying a more critical approach to ‘Europe’. In this paper, I aim to show how different narratives on ‘Europe’ emerged within the context of these empty signifiers. The paper claims that the difference in the two narratives on ‘Europe’ in two different periods does not point to a complete and fully fledged de-Europeanisation trend.     

Can ‘Citizen in Uniform’ Survive? German Civil–Military Culture Responding to War

This article points out the role of perceptions, hereafter referred to as ‘civil– military culture’, that German society holds about the German armed forces. Analysing the discourse in German newspapers concerning Bundeswehr missions abroad since the early 1990s, and the engagement in Afghanistan in particular, it is argued that options to use the military abroad were circumscribed mainly to humanitarian tasks. This was so because German soldiers have been perceived in accordance with the official concept of a ‘citizen in uniform’, which has strong ethical implications, and consequently the Bundeswehr was seen as a humanitarian and rescue organisation. However, since the discourse in 2009 made it clear that the internalised civil–military culture no longer provides adequate guidance regarding how to approach a war-like situation such as that in Afghanistan, the entire German civil–military culture is challenged.     

Ahmed İhsan and the ‘Wealth of the Sciences’

In the past, weekly journals often served as the primary vehicle for the publication and dissemination of high-quality literature. Novels and plays were often serialized in such periodicals, which also featured items of poetry, essays and even political analysis. The Turkish weekly Servet-i Fünun [Wealth of the Sciences] which began publishing in 1891 and closed down in 1944 attracted contributions from the best Turkish writers of its time, and its very name became a banner for new currents in Turkish literature, whether poetry or prose. Part of its success was due to the single-minded labours of its founder and editor, Ahmed ?hsan, a journalist and novelist of distinction. The article attempts to assign to the journal and its editor their proper place within the history of Turkish literary journalism.     

Constructing the ‘Immigrant’: Germany’s Radical Left in the Refugee Crisis

The article scrutinises how Germany’s non-political party radical left has discussed immigration and ‘cultural’ or ‘national’ identity in the context of past and current immigration into Germany, with a focus on the refugee crisis of 2015. Three types of radical left discourse are identified. First, some in the radical left have come to regard immigrants, in particular refugees, as an ‘ersatz proletariat’ and therefore as potential revolutionary instruments for their own project. Second, some agree that revolutionary change is necessary but subordinate their principles to practical support for immigrants and refugees in the here and now. Third, given the improbability of communist revolution and the crisis of ‘Western modernity’, some on the radical left have called for the defence of ‘the West’ and to help immigrants assimilate into Western civilisation. The article makes a timely contribution to the knowledge about contemporary radical left politics in Germany and shows the fractured nature of Germany’s non-political party radical left in the context of the refugee crisis. It also investigates the impact of ‘crisis’ as an ‘open moment’ and ‘catalyst’ on the radical left’s discourse-as-practice.     

Halil Kut – ‘the last Ottoman Pasha’

The siege of British Indian forces by the Ottoman Army at Kut-al-Amara ?n Iraq during the First World War, which ended on 29 April 1916 with the surrender of the garrison under the command of Major General Sir Charles Townshend, was an important m?l?tary defeat for Great Britain. The article provides supplementary information on aspects of the 147 day long siege and surrender, based mainly on the memoirs of the Turkish General H. K. Pasha, whose forces took well over 10,000 British Indian officers and men into custody at Kut-al-Amara.     

Contextualising the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ in Darfur

ABSTRACT

This article argues for a thorough contextual analysis based on understanding local, regional and international politico-economic linkages in the Sudan, in order to ground prospects of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine in the ongoing crisis in Darfur. The R2P framework was crystallised by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001. It was adapted and subsequently endorsed by United Nations (UN) member states during the 2005 UN World Summit. The R2P ostensibly provides normative benchmarks on how states should respond to the quadruple human rights violations of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. Indeed, there is debate on whether the prevailing crisis in Darfur constitutes a test case for the application of the R2P. However, such debate is misplaced on two grounds: first, it glosses over the inherent conceptual deficiencies of the R2P, as presently constituted. More importantly, such debate is primarily inspired by reactionary and externalising influences based on past international failings, like Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia (1993). Hence, it is argued that the starting point of analysing the Darfur crisis should be a thorough investigation of how local, regional and international politico-economic factors have historically worked in an orchestrated fashion to trigger and sustain the crisis in the Sudan. Knowledge and an understanding of such historical specificity is a requisite for determining the relevance of the R2P in Darfur. The R2P, as presently constituted and practised, does not address this gap.     

Japan’s Shifting Military Priorities: Counterbalancing China’s Rise

This article analyzes the most recent phase of Japan’s security policy reform, focusing on its shifting priorities towards the Japan Self-Defense Forces and the Japan–US alliance since mid-2010. From a realist perspective, it argues that these shifting military priorities first and foremost represent a traditional counterbalancing response to China’s rise. Conforming to the logic inherent in balance of threat theory, it moreover argues that this balancing behavior is explained by a confluence of two primary factors, namely Japanese perceptions of aggressive Chinese behavior in the maritime domain and concerns relating to the changing distribution of capabilities in China’s favor.     

The Iraqi Ba‘th Party Preparatory School and the ‘Cultural’ Courses of the Branches

Political indoctrination of the Ba’th party cadre in Iraq was critical for the durability of the regime for 35 years. The party preparatory school was the vehicle for the ideological training of the party elite, while special courses, provided by the party branches, focused on the ‘cultural’ education of the party's lower echelons to prepare them for becoming active members. Using the Ba’th's own archives, the article examines how the party's school, the branches’ cultural courses, and the Ba’th cultural activities, combined to create an ideologically educated cadre which paved the way for the party's domination of Iraq's culture and ideology.     

The Commonwealth of Nations and the EU after the ‘Global’ Crisis: Rethinking Post-2015 ‘Global’ Development?

Abstract

The continuing ‘global’ crisis has accelerated divergences between regions, especially between the ‘rising’ global South, the European Union (EU) of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) and Cyprus, which belongs to both the Commonwealth and the EU. This article studies the emerging ‘vertical’ divergences between the EU and the global South, especially around the so-called Economic Partnership Agreements, and the parallel ‘horizontal’ divergences among Anglophone, Francophone (the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) and Lusophone (the Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) Commonwealths, with their inheritance of emulation and competition. It focuses on the possibilities of enhanced human/citizen security to propose an analysis that challenges established perspectives and points towards prospects for Commonwealth ‘schools’ of international relations/development.     

‘Condemned forever to becoming and never to being’? The Weise Commission and German Military Isomorphism

Despite several post-Cold War reforms which have promised far-reaching change, the Bundeswehr faces a set of deficits in force structures, capabilities, doctrines and military adaptation, which leave it in danger of slipping permanently behind its European partners. The study examines the extent to which reforms proposed by the Commission on Structural Reform of the Bundeswehr will remedy these deficiencies. It finds that the proposals of the Commission include several important measures which will accelerate German convergence with the reforms of its European partners. However, the Commission fails to address several fundamental problems which impair the Bundeswehr's capacity to adapt to ongoing operations. The article critically engages with the existing theoretical literature on German defence policy and highlights the utility of neoclassical realism in explaining the process and outcome of German defence reform. The study also points to the urgent requirement for further comparative scholarship on post-Cold War European military adaptation and civil–military relations in defence planning.     

‘On the outskirts of the Empire’: Joseph Brodsky and Lithuania

This article explores the role of Lithuania in Joseph Brodsky’s life and works before and after his exile from Russia in 1972. As a former Soviet republic, Lithuania represented an intermediary space for Brodsky both culturally and geographically, contributing to his realization that it was a ‘rehearsal’ for his actual emigration. However, Brodsky’s notion of Lithuania changes when, after 1972, instead of representing a simulacrum of the ‘abroad,’ the poet sees Lithuania as a ‘home’ from afar. Emigration, in Brodsky’s case, thus became a realization of the myth of exile implicit in his earlier texts about Lithuania.