The Cod Wars: a re-analysis

The occurrence and outcomes of the Cod Wars defy both popular and academic expectations. Iceland, a microstate, essentially won four disputes against the UK, a great power. The two states furthermore belonged to a Western security community, sharing significant institutional, economic and cultural ties. This article reviews the history and international relations literature on the Cod Wars to explain and evaluate why the Cod Wars occurred and why Iceland won them. This article also explains what lessons international relations scholarship has learned from the Cod Wars for liberal international relations theory, realism and asymmetric bargaining.     

Monetary Orientalism: Currency Wars and the Framing of China as Global Cheater

China stands as a paradigmatic sign of deep angst for the United States in late stage capitalism, a menacing spectre of foreignness and otherness that organises Western popular anxieties at a time where nothing is fixed within international markets. Focusing on the so called “currency wars” debate that erupted in the early twenty-first century, when the PRC was accused of devaluating its currency, this article contends that PRC’s representation as a prime currency manipulator and cheater can be conceptualised through what I am calling monetary Orientalism or the ways imperialising thoughts circulate around monetary flows in relation to a rising Asiatic superpower. This framework serves as a prime lens for situating US nationalist sentiment and its sense of an exceptional global self against what it perceives as a global other.     

The “Civic” Road to Secession: Political Ideology as an Ethnic Boundary Marker in Contemporary Scotland

Abstract

Civic nationalism is a weak vessel for secession. Nonetheless, contemporary Scottish nationalism has proven unusually successful, using the characteristically civic marker of political ideology as its signature boundary mechanism. Because a civic form of nationalism funnels toward civic markers of national identity, nationalist elites define Scotland as social democratic and England as neoliberal. This symbolic cultivation of a Scottish social democratic essence is deeply ethnic, however, through a mythological fusion of ideology with genealogy characteristic of ethnic myths of descent. Scotland’s “civic” nationalism points up the confused nature of the ethnic-civic dichotomy itself.     

Religion as a Factor in Ethnic Conflict: Kashmir and Indian Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Ethnic conflicts with a strong religious component do not have merely domestic or foreign causes and consequences. As a result, internationalization of ethnic conflict has become an important subject of inquiry both in terms of pure research and policy-oriented studies. This article presents a case study of Indian-Pakistani relations over Kashmir, used to evaluate the role of religion and the explanatory power of the approach presented here. The aim of the study is to apply a foreign policy approach that simultaneously incorporates domestic and external factors in an analysis of how and in what ways religious elements of the Kashmir question affect India's foreign policy. The approach, an application of “systemism,” contributes to current developments in the realist school of international relations through its emphasis on the need to look at both international and state levels in combination. Earlier applications of realism, as both neotraditional and structural realism clearly demonstrate, tend to remain restricted to one level or the other. In this approach, a religious dynamic can have a domestic source yet be effectively examined in terms of international ramifications.     

Social repair in divided societies: integrating a coexistence lens into transitional justice

This paper explores the importance of integrating a coexistence lens into transitional justice theory and practice. Transitional justice seeks to address a legacy of large-scale past abuses. In societies that have suffered from violent intergroup conflict, this legacy includes divided communities and widespread distrust and fear of the ‘other’. Transitional justice processes and mechanisms, however, are unlikely to repair intergroup relationships, transform communities or eliminate tensions in the absence of specific attention to promote coexistence. The field of coexistence provides a framework for thinking about intergroup relations and interdependence. Coexistence initiatives—such as dialogue facilitation, intergroup projects and associations aimed at achieving shared goals, and media campaigns designed to reframe the ‘other’—are essential to restoring trust, transforming perceptions and rebuilding relationships. Looking at countries that have experienced violent intergroup conflict, in particular Bosnia and Herzegovina, the paper provides examples of coexistence initiatives that have achieved successes in changing attitudes, repairing relationships and strengthening communities—and discusses their potential to contribute to transitional justice processes and mechanisms.     

Defending the Nation: The Role of Nationalism in Chinese Thinking on Human Rights

This article examines the symbiotic relationship between Chinese thinking on human rights and Chinese nationalism. It analyses the three key periods in the Chinese discourse on human rights: late Qing, Republican, and post-Mao. In each case, discussions of rights have often (but not always) taken place within a wider debate about the protection of China's national interests from foreign infringement, although the nature of the foreign infringement has changed over time. During the late Qing debate, with China increasingly threatened by foreign military imperialism, scholars argued enthusiastically for the introduction of a new system of democratic rights as a vital tool of national resistance. During the Republican era that followed, the threat from outside remained the same. However by now many theorists had grown disillusioned with democracy and rights, believing that the only way China could withstand further foreign encroachments was to withhold rights from its people. In the post-Mao debate on rights, the interests of the nation are again at the fore. But with China now an emerging rather than a collapsing power, rights are often analysed – at least from an official perspective – within the context of cultural rather than military imperialism, the new ‘threat’ from abroad. The article then examines the views of China's ‘non-official’ rights thinkers, most of whom tend to be much less affected by nationalist concerns and ends with an assessment of the prospects for democracy and rights in China.     

Threats to Primal Identities: A Comparison of Nationalism and Religion as Impacts on Ethnic Protest and Rebellion

The post World War II world has witnessed a proliferation of conflicts based on ethnic differences. Religion and national identity are two dominant features of many of these ethnic struggles. The purpose of this study is to determine which of the two has a greater impact on protest and rebellion using large-n methodology, employing variables from the Minorities at Risk Phase 3 dataset as well as data collected independently. It was found that the simple answer is that nationalism has a greater impact on conflict than does religion. However, this simple answer is not an accurate answer. This is because the simple answer that nationalism has a greater influence is to a great extent due to the fact that the majority of ethnic conflicts are between groups that are not religiously different. If one looks only at those ethnic conflicts where religion can potentially be a factor, religious and national issues are involved in ethnic conflicts approximately as often. Also, while religious issues alone seem to have less of an influence on ethnic conflict than national issues, religious issues have a strong influence on the relationship between nationalism and ethnic conflict, to the extent that the relationship between nationalism and ethnic conflict can not be fully understood without accounting for the influence of religion.     

Press content as a key to a country's alignment: The case of Ethiopia

This article examines the news content of an Ethiopian government‐run newspaper over a period of 20 years to determine how closely the present government is aligned with the Soviet Union. There are two schools of though among foreign policy scholars. Regionalists believe Ethiopia is nonaligned. They argue that since the country follows the tenants of African socialism, its international politics are shaped by indigenous factors such as nationalism and local economic and security needs, rather than by Soviet or U.S. influence. Globalists, on the other hand, believe Ethiopia belongs to the Soviet camp and is dependent on the Soviet Union. A review of a government‐run newspaper in two ten‐year periods before and after the takeover by Mengistu Haile Mariam found a dramatic shift in the nature of coverage. Under Emperor Haile Selassie before the ovethrow, the paper printed predominantly pro‐United States and anti‐Soviet news. But under Mengistu, the same paper printed vastly pro‐Soviet and anti‐United States news, and absolutely no anti‐Soviet news. These findings support the globalist view.     

20世纪国际关系领域的基准时间:历史视角中的三次世界大战

基准时间是宏观历史过程中的临界点,标志着一连串的重大变革可能会在较长时间内延续。基准时间具有九条标准,可以分为一等基准时间、二等基准时间和三等基准时间。20世纪的基准时间主要包括三次世界大战(一战、二战和冷战),第二次世界大战前后发生的变革比第一次世界大战和冷战前后的变革都要来得更为深远。将20世纪的三个基准时间置于两个世纪的视角中加以审视,可以突出现代性革命,这种视角能够观察20世纪的三个基准时间在正在展开的"全球性变革"这一大的主题下是否会相互联接、是如何相互联接的。20世纪国际政治的关键事件,都应该被视为19世纪"全球性变革"所引发的发展态势和挑战的后期结果。     

Negotiating National Identity and Self-Determination in Ethnic Conflicts: The Choice Between Pluralism and Ethnic Cleansing

The contradictions of ethnonational identity, which make it a prime force in both the promotion and the destruction of human dignity and social justice, have become more pronounced with the ending of the Cold War. It is necessary to reconceptualize national identity and develop new norms for accepting a group's right to national self-determination through establishment of an independent state expressing its national identity, and even far accepting its claim to national identity itself This article proposes that (1) implementation of a group's right to self-determination cannot be left to the group alone, but must be negotiated with those who are affected by that decision, particularly minority populations; and (2) national identity itself must be negotiated — explored and discussed — with those who are affected by the group's self-definition.     

族群战争的爆发：一个广义理论

基于两个分析性的创新：对社会事实秉持以机制为基础的理解路径和对动态交互影响的强调,作者提出了一个有关族群战争爆发的广义理论,并利用两种元机制——安全困境/螺旋模型和群体间–群体内互动——作为“元综合器”,将战争的影响因素与冲突行为的直接驱动力联系起来,对散布在现有文献中的众多因素和机制加以综合,形成了一个更具整合性且动态的族群战争理论。该理论不但整合了既有文献中已经识别的众多因素和机制,而且揭示了先前被隐藏或被忽视的因素、互动和机制,由此指明未来在这些方向的探究将是硕果累累。     

Twentieth Century Benchmark Dates inInternational Relations:The Three World Wars in Historical Perspective *

This paper builds on the author’s earlier work on benchmark dates inInternational Relations. The Introduction summarises this work and explains howthis paper extends the analysis from suggestions made, but not developed, in earlierpublications. The second section looks in detail at 20 th century benchmark dates centredon the three world wars (First, Second and Cold). It argues that the changes clusteredaround the Second World War are both deeper and more extensive than those clusteredaround either the First World War or the Cold War. The third section uses theseinsights to open-up a macro-historical perspective on the 20 th century, demonstratingthe ways in which choices in relation to both time and scale affect the constructionof macro-historical perspectives. The fourth section demonstrates the advantages ofa two-century perspective on the 20 th century. Here, and in the conclusion, we arguethat the key issues that underpinned world politics in the 20 th century are best seen asthe downstream consequences of the dynamics and challenges ushered in by the 19 thcentury “global transformation.”     

Defending the 'postwar petroleum order': The US, Britain and the 1954 Saudi-Onassis Tanker deal

During the early Cold War, Britain and the US fashioned a set of arrangements described collectively in this article as the 'postwar petroleum order', which appropriated Persian Gulf oil to fuel European reconstruction and defence. When Saudi Arabia organized a state oil-tanker company with Aristotle Onassis in 1954, it challenged the terms of those arrangements. The affair provides a case study in contrasting British and American approaches towards oil diplomacy and Arab nationalism. Whereas London crusaded for an Anglo-American campaign to abolish the Saudi-Onassis company, Washington wanted the Arabian-American Oil Company to accomplish the same objective by providing financial incentives to King Sa'ud's government.