No humanitarian intervention in Asian genocides: how possible and legitimate?

Abstract

This article addresses an important empirical puzzle: why has the United States, without exception, chosen not to intervene in the six humanitarian catastrophes in post-war Asia, namely in Indonesia, East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Sri Lanka and Myanmar? We use an eclectic approach that blends arguments about the international normative structure and geostrategic interests to examine what has made the absence of humanitarian intervention in Asia by the US possible and legitimate. Specifically, we focus on the paradox between calls for humanitarian intervention and the historically and geographically contingent social construction of the norms of humanity, national sovereignty and United Nations-backed multilateralism in conjunction with US and Chinese concerns over their regional geostrategic interests. The normative narratives about race, ‘communists’, ‘terrorists’, international order and inclusive multilateral processes, and the geostrategic interests of the US and China, combine to make non-intervention possible and legitimate.     

Editor's Notes

Dr Feng Huiyun examines in her article Is China a RevisionistPower? the operational code beliefs of four Chinese leaders,Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, to provideunderstanding of the kind of rising power China will become.China is indeed rising, and general international relationstheory predicts that rising powers as doomed to clash with thehegemonic or declining power. But motivations other than materialpower figure in state foreign policy decision making. Intentionsas reflected in a state leader's beliefs are also importantin predicting state behavior and assessment     

Editor's Notes

Since the end of the Cold War, the main focus of research forscholars of International Relations has been the theory of deterrence.Their main questions are: under what conditions do states attemptto deter? How do a state's efforts to deter affect the challengingstate's beliefs? When is deterrence successful? Preferences,Information and the Deterrence Game by Xiang Ganghua and WangYongxian uses a game theoretic approach to answer these questions.The authors begin with a comparison of three main approachesto the study of deterrence: cost-benefit analysis; rationalchoice analysis; and game theory. They demonstrate the superiority     

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.     

The offensive posture of NATO's missile defence system

A compelling case can be made to develop a NATO's missile defence system in response to the advancement of missile technology and the danger of nuclear weapons. However, this development also undermines Russia's retaliatory capacity, and consequently heightens the offensive potential of nuclear weapons. This article explores the offence/defence posture of NATO's missile defence plans in terms of both capabilities and strategy. It is argued that NATO is incrementally increasing the strength and reach of its missile defence components, while rejecting any international treaty to regulate and limit their future expansion. This corresponds with a strategy of achieving invulnerability through counterforce and utilising NATO as an ‘insurance policy’ against Russia, to be activated when conflicts arise. We conclude that NATO has the capacity to distinguish between an offensive and defensive posture by discriminating between potential targets, but it has displayed no intention to do so.     

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.     

America’s Missing Leverage in Afghanistan and Pakistan: a structural analysis

Abstract

Despite strong shared interests and their dependence on US assistance, Kabul and Islamabad frequently fail to cooperate with the USA’s post-9/11 security agenda. Why doesn’t the USA have more leverage in these alliances and what can it change to be more influential? This article identifies four structural factors in Washington’s alliances in Afghanistan and Pakistan (‘Af-Pak’) contributing to Washington’s lack of coercive power: 1) the USA’s interest makes coercion difficult; 2) Kabul and Islamabad have more invested and will bargain to protect their interests; 3) the form of US commitment (an intense but explicitly temporary military commitment) produces incentives for Kabul and Islamabad to adopt short-term solutions, frequently running against US interests; and 4) the tenets of counterinsurgency policy cause Washington to be politically dependent on Kabul and Islamabad, effectively reducing its influence.     

The Presidentialist Tradition in Latin America

Abstract

The diffusion of presidentialism to Latin America has led to its distortion. The North American constitutional pattern, termed presidentialism under separation of powers and its most distinguishing feature, presidential leadership, while modeled in Latin America, has rarely led to democratic–constitutional government a la the United States. The institution of the presidency in Latin America is also typical for nondemocratic regimes in the region. One of the most widely accepted and widely professed facts in Latin American politics is the dominant role of the president but, curiously, most discussions of presidentialism are limited to the US and comparisons with Great Britain. Few studies of Latin American chief executives lend shape to the corpus of scholarly literature, despite the region's long experience and ejecutivismo. The gap, and this article, should be taken as a stimulus for more systematic explication, analysis, and research.     

Editor's Notes

Professor Wenfang Tang's article, Nationalism and ElectoralOutcome in Taiwan: The Impact of Identity Fence-sitting on VotingBehaviour, examines the impact of the electorate's sense ofnational identity on voting behaviour, based on public opinionsurvey data amassed over the four Taiwan elections from 2000to 2004. The concept of national identity combines an individual'ssense of either ethnic Taiwanese or Chinese identity and correspondingadvocacy of either Taiwan independence or reunification withChina. The article focuses on national identity ‘fence-sitters’—thesection of the electorate undecided as to its sense of eitherChinese or Taiwanese identity, consequently an advocate of neitherindependence nor reunification. Professor Tang's     

Compassionate conservatives or conservative compassionates? US political parties and bilateral foreign assistance to Africa

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy towards Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely thought to have led to a gradual disengagement of the US from Africa and reduced American attention toward the continent. This article analyses data on US foreign assistance flows from 1961?–?2000 and finds that neither of these assumptions is true. Rather, we find that the configuration of party control over Congress and the Presidency matters significantly, with aid to Africa substantially reduced when the two branches are in opposition.     

Review

Abstract

What structured the fundamental nature of Indian security for the first 50 years of the country's independence? This article draws out four normative parameters that have been tempered and normalised during this period through India's international interaction along with her internal political developments. Using notions of ‘security identity’, the article unpacks these normative parameters in order to investigate holistically the interaction between both domestic and foreign influences in India's international relations. As such, the article finds a relative consistency to how security has been conceived of in India—displaying sustained threats to its territorial integrity, a continued democratic tradition, ongoing fears of communal violence plus an engrained desire for a greater global role. In turn, it has been the interface between internal and external factors that has structured, and continues to structure, Indian security.     

Bandits and blanket thieves,communists and terrorists: the politics of naming Sandinistas in Nicaragua, 1927 – 36 and 1979 – 90

This article examines the politics of naming Sandinistas in Nicaragua during two periods of intense political and military struggle: the era of the Sandinista Revolution and Contra War (1979?–?90) and the era of the Sandino rebellion against the US Marines and Nicaraguan National Guard (1927?–?36). Focusing principally on the rhetorical and narrative strategies used by the USA and its Nicaraguan allies, the article explores the delegitimising master narratives concocted by these dominant groups and the efforts of two generations of Sandinistas and their allies to challenge these narratives. It argues that the politics of naming was embedded within a larger politics of storytelling, and that effective challenges to dominant groups' epithets must be grounded in historically informed challenges to the larger narratives from which they spring.     

APEC and its enemies: The failure of the new regionalism in the Asia-Pacific

This article looks at the rise of APEC as a vehicle for the promotion of free trade in the Asia-Pacific. It argues that, although the Japanese government was more interested in trade cooperation than free trade, it played a key role, along with the Australian government, in the establishment of APEC, while the main challenge to APEC came from the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamed. During the 1990s, however, Mahathir's proposal for an East Asian Economic Bloc which excluded the USA, Australia, New Zealand and all other 'non-Asian' nation-states, was incorporated into APEC and took the name of the East Asian Economic Caucus. The accommodation of Mahathir's proposal to the APEC process, and his inability to get Japanese support for his pan-Asian initiative, symbolised the limits on any and all regional challenges to US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific. The article also emphasises that, with the coming of the East Asian crisis, the prospects of a successful regional challenge to US hegemony have become even more remote. In particular, the growing influence of the IMF in the region since the crisis has made APEC irrelevant, while the inability of regional elites to deal with the crisis in a unified fashion has thrown into sharp relief the serious obstacles which exist to any pan-Asian effort to challenge neoliberalism. At the same time, although the East Asian crisis has precipitated a reassertion of US hegemony and a consolidation of neoliberalism, the present juncture may also herald the start of a crisis of neoliberalism, with regional and international implications.     

From CNOOC to Huawei: securitization,the China threat,and critical infrastructure

ABSTRACT

This article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how China has been constructed as an existential threat by the United States. Specifically, it explores how US reactions to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in 2005 created precedent for similar reactions to Huawei a decade later. It uses these case studies to demonstrate how the interplay between the China threat and security discourses of critical infrastructure has worked to successfully securitize China within broader American discourse. These examinations demonstrate a deliberate and protracted securitization of China by US elites, and they support more critical approaches to securitization theory that emphasize cumulative and incremental aspects over a securitized/de-securitized binary. Discourse analysis of key texts allows the reader to uncover how security issues are socially constructed, and discursive examinations of CNOOC and Huawei illustrate how concerns about national security are now employed in everyday American political discourse so that the China Threat Discourse has become the primary reading of China by US observers.     

Headquarters of Terrorists Is “Virtual Ummah”

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

America's “Maginot Line” Defense Against Terror

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

How Turkey's Soft Power Can Aid NATO in Afghanistan

Though anti‐American terrorism springs these days as much from Yemen and the “virtual ummah” as from Afghanistan, President Obama has nontheless further committed US troops to stabilizing a country well‐known as the graveyard of empires. What can the only Muslim country that belongs to NATO offer by way of advice? How best can the US keep its focus on the terrorist threat despite its diversion in Afghanistan? Turkey's former envoy to Afghanistan and two of Europe's leading experts on Islamist terrorism offer their views.     

Challenging Global Neoliberalism? The global political economy of China's capital controls

This article engages with critical ipe scholars who have examined the rise of China and its impact on the neoliberal world order by analysing whether China poses a challenge to the neoliberal norm of free movement of capital. We argue that China's capital control regime is marked by a contradiction between its domestic social relations of production and its global geo-economic ambitions. On one hand, the key raison d'être of China's capital controls is to protect and consolidate an investment-led accumulation regime that redistributes income and wealth from Chinese workers to its state-owned enterprise sector. Dismantling these controls would result in changing social relations of production that would not necessarily benefit Chinese industrial and financial capital. On the other hand, China's accumulation regime has found itself increasingly constrained by the dynamics of US monetary hegemony, making the contestation of US structural monetary power a key global geo-economic ambition of China's ruling elites. In this regard, China would have to challenge the dominance of the US dollar by promoting the international role of the renminbi and developing liquid financial markets. Since it would have to abolish its capital controls in order to achieve this, there is a plain contradiction between its domestic and global objectives. A good understanding of this contradiction is necessary in order to be able to assess whether China will be capable of challenging the neoliberal world order in general and the norm of free movement of capital in particular.     

Cash is King: Financial Sponsorship and Changing Priorities in the Syrian Civil War

ABSTRACT

The role of resources in war has been much debated. What happens when foreign patrons provide lavish amounts of cash to rebels, without mechanisms of accountability? This article analyzes three major sources of funding and their micro-level effects on insurgent-groups in the Syrian civil war. Recipients of funding demonstrated opportunism in actions, alliances, and ideologies, directly related to the funding source. Funders thus set the agenda of the war, promoting Islamist ideologies and regional over local issues. Private donors rivaled state sponsors, in what may be a harbinger of future globalization trends.     

Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico

Mainstream analysis and commentary on drug trafficking and related violence in Mexico focuses overwhelmingly on the narco-cartels as sources of the problem and presents the US as a well intentioned player helping to conduct a ‘war on drugs’ out of concern for addiction, crime and violence. This article offers an alternative interpretation, grounded in critical political economy, showing that in addition to fuelling the narcotics industry in Mexico thanks to its large drug consumption and loose firearms regulations, the US shares much responsibility for its expansion thanks to its record of support for some of the main players in the drugs trade, such as the Mexican government and military, and by implementing neoliberal reforms that have increased the size of the narcotics industry. The war on drugs has served as a pretext to intervene in Mexican affairs and to protect US hegemonic projects such as nafta, rather than as a genuine attack on drug problems. In particular, the drugs war has been used repeatedly to repress dissent and popular opposition to neoliberal policies in Mexico. Finally, US banks have increased their profits by laundering drug money from Mexico and elsewhere; the failure to implement tighter regulations testifies to the power of the financial community in the US.