“Only the USSR Has… Clean Hands”: The Soviet Perspective on the Failure of Collective Security and the Collapse of Czechoslovakia, 1934–1938 (Part 2)

The second part of this two part essay focuses on the Czechoslovak crisis in 1938, based on papers from the Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii in Moscow and the recently published journals of Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan M. Maiskii. The essay is also grounded in British, French, and Romanian archives, and the standard document collections, including the American and German series. The Soviet Union did all that it could do, given Anglo-French abdication, to help the Czechoslovak goverment defend its independance against Nazi Germany. The British and French portrayed a manipulative Soviet Union, seeking to abandon treaty commitments to Czechoslovakia, while at the same time they fled from obligations to Prague and projected their own evasions onto Moscow. In spite of everything, the Czechoslovak president, Edvard Bene?, might have held the fate of his country in his own hands. Would he do “something crazy”, would Czechoslovakia fight alone at the outset, hoping that public opinion would force France and Great Britain into war? Tragically, Bene? would not bid va banque and indeed was complicit in the Anglo-French abandonment of his country. By its reckoning, the Soviet Union escaped the crisis with “clean hands”, though a clear conscience was no consolation in Moscow, where the government had to contemplate the ruin of collective security and its own isolation in Europe.     

A Review of: “Rogelio Alonso. The IRA and Armed Struggle.”

ABSTRACT

In the conceptual literature on terrorism, there is no shortage of answers to the question: “What is terrorism?” Indeed, the terrorism literature has been heavily criticized for a deluge of definitions. And yet the booming quantitative terrorism literature generally examines a narrow set of “what is terrorism?”: how country-level factors explain variation in the number of terrorist attacks. This article demonstrates the variety of ways in which scholars currently operationalize terrorism and compares them to the ways it could be operationalized. I replicate studies using alternative operationalizations of terrorism to examine the consequences of the terrorism literature’s collective bet to focus on attack counts at the country level. Finally, I discuss the implications of the narrow set of operational choices with an eye towards how a greater variety of approaches would produce a more robust research agenda.     

The End of Global Constitutionalism and Rise of Antidemocratic Politics

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon the idea of “constitutional antagonism” this article offers a critique of the liberal cosmopolitan framing global constitutionalism and its response to the rise of antidemocratic and “populist” authoritarian politics. Liberal cosmopolitan approaches to global constitutionalism generally pay inadequate attention to the ways in which neoliberal ideology and rationality have come to dominate the fragmented networks and structures of global constitutionalism and the connected emergence of an anti-cosmopolitan and authoritarian discourse of “nationalist neoliberalism”. Against the limits of liberal cosmopolitanism, and against the twin threats of neoliberal transnational governance and neoliberal nationalist, interstate conflict, it is argued that if an idea of transnational or global constitutionalism is to be held onto and retain any value then it must be based upon socially transformative ideas of egalitarian and ecological social justice and enacted through legal and political strategies and struggles that attempt to actively displace neoliberal ideology and rationality.     

Handle Him with Care: The Importance of Getting Thucydides Right

Scholars from numerous disciplines continue to study, debate, and value Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War. This review essay first explores and elaborates many of the enduring and vital contributions of Thucydides for IR theory. It then assesses and engages three new books, including a major, wide-ranging collection of new essays and a very influential (and deeply flawed) attempt to apply the lessons of that work—one that warns of a “Thucydides Trap” that might unwittingly ensnare the United States and China, resulting in an unwanted and catastrophic war between the two. This review essay argues that, as illustrated by the books under consideration here, contemporary IR scholars would be very well served by taking Thucydides seriously and would benefit from reading and considering his History with great care; at the same time, there are enormous, perilous analytical dangers inherent in attempting to draw conclusions from a superficial reading of The Peloponnesian War.     

Being Nuclear on a Budget: Churchill,Britain and “Atoms for Peace,” 1953–1955

This analysis critiques the impact of President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” initiative on Washington’s alliance with Britain, itself a newly crowned nuclear state. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s taste for personal diplomacy led him to support his friend’s proposal without real consideration for how the contributions of fissionable materials and manpower demanded by the scheme would damage Britain’s overstretched domestic nuclear project. Membership of an international atomic agency allowed Britain to reaffirm its global status whilst depleting the resources needed to develop its native technology. In turn, the article discusses the commercial challenge posed by American nuclear firms and highlights how reactor exports quickly became a contest between the quality of British research and the quantity of American subsidies. In this way, it establishes how “Atoms for Peace” prejudiced both Britain’s domestic nuclear effort and export potential, in turn shedding light on Washington’s relations with an ailing Great Power.     

CTS and normativity: the essentials of preemptive counter-terrorism interventions

This article critically assesses calls for “normativity” in counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism, and suggests that aligning with hegemonic narratives about securing the “pre-crime” space is problematic in a context of emancipation. Utilising interviews with a number of Prevent officials (including Channel “de-radicalisation” mentors), the article argues that when any counter-radicalisation regime is implemented, two traits are necessarily inherent: identity construction, and “concerned concern”, both of which are based on subjective speculation about an individual’s future intent. Identity construction in preemptive counter-terrorism works through prejudiced human imagination in order to normalise perceived and “risky” divergence, but which is mired in contradictions precisely because practitioners interpret risk (and therefore divergence) differently. Concerned concern is a paradoxical constitution both of support for and protection against individuals. Ultimately, in exploring these two concepts, the article critically engages with the notion that Prevent is “just another safeguarding duty”. Building on earlier critical terrorism scholarship, this discussion shows how worst-case logics apparent in national discourse are largely absent at the point of implementation, yet pejorative identity-construction and some suspicion (no matter how banalised) are implicit in any risk-managing scheme in a counter-terrorism context. These qualities are incompatible with an emancipatory agenda.     

Borders of memory: affirmation and contestation over Japan’s heritage

Abstract

This essay, introducing the special issue on ‘Borders of Memory’, aims to shed light on the links between memory and heritage in contemporary Japan. It does so by examining how heritage sites serve as spaces within which collective memory is both affirmed and contested. Heritage sites enable us to survey the contours of the borders of memory that exist between different memory collectives. An analysis of South Korean and Chinese objections to the Meiji Industrial Sites shows how these heritage sites work as borders of memory, spaces where the competing collective memories of neighbouring East Asian governments and societies clash and rub up against one another. This analysis is then extended to the four articles that make up this special issue. In each case, it is the competing meanings invested in the site, and the struggle over the narrative within which it is incorporated, that results in such sites coming to be demarcated as borders of memory. Understanding these heritage sites as bordered spaces allows us to see such them as being not only where antagonistic collective memories come into contact, but also spaces through which they connect. The existence of such spaces enables the political process of articulating the stories associated with different memory collectives.     

Sam Fisher and the “war on terror”: an analysis of Splinter Cell in a post-9/11 context

This article examines the values and attitudes present within the 2002 video game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, and the methods employed to convey them. It compares the game’s message with the rhetoric contained in the Bush administration’s post-9/11 “war on terror” narrative. A qualitative content analysis of a Splinter Cell “game movie” and gameplay sessions is undertaken to examine the messages communicated through elements of simulation and representation. This article finds that Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” narrative express similar perspectives of terrorism and counterterrorism. First, both exaggerate the physical and normative threat of terrorism, and portray it as overwhelmingly powerful. Second, both sources justify violent counterterrorism action through claims of necessity, urgency and self-defence. Third, violence is consistently portrayed as effective for achieving the desired objective. Finally, violence and military action are represented as simple solutions that ultimately lead to victory over terrorism. The parallels between the messages within Splinter Cell and the “war on terror” rhetoric indicate that the game was shaped by the post-9/11 culture in which it was developed. More significantly, however, Splinter Cell perpetuates and legitimises the “war on terror” narrative by conveying its message through an immersive interactive environment.     

Representing the West and “non-believers” in the online jihadist magazines Dabiq and Inspire

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how jihadist ideology groups discursively represent “the West” and “non-believers” in their online propagandamagazines. In doing so, it contributes to the field of Critical Terrorism Studies conceptually, by considering the voices of violent actors, and methodologically, by illustrating how linguistic tools of enquiry can advance current knowledge of jihadist ideology groups. Our work adopts a case study approach, focusing on the online magazines Inspire and Dabiq, which are part of the propaganda machinery of, respectively, Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The analysis reveals a number of similarities and differences in the discursive strategies that these twogroups use. On the one hand, both Inspire and Dabiq support and further construct an “us versus them” dichotomy thatpolarises differences between their jihadist ideologies and those of Westerners/non-believers. On the other, Dabiq’s discursiverepresentation of “the West” targets a wider variety of individuals and groups of people and geographical locations than Inspire’s. Additionally, Inspire places a greater focus on the pejorative construction of “the West” than Dabiq, suggesting that Al-Qaeda places more emphasis than ISIS on presenting “the West” as the enemy of jihad.     

“International terrorism” in the League of Nations and the contemporary terrorism dispositif

This article recovers states’ discursive practices regarding “international terrorism” in the 1930s. It examines the internal conditions of the discourse of terrorism among states in this period with a particular focus on its conspiratorial elements and suggests external conditions for this discourse’s emergence and order. Furthermore, it points to continuities and discontinuities between the 1930s discursive series and the constituent discursive forms of the contemporary global terrorism dispositif – an assemblage of power practices which bear on individual human bodies, populations or (rogue or fragile) states and which are all strategically oriented through the concept of terrorism. The purpose of such a genealogical history is to expand the space of dissent to power practices in the dominant structures of (terrorism) knowledge by problematising their object and the ways in which these formations are productive of human subjectivity.     

Rethinking Kurdish geopolitical space: the politics of image,insecurity and gender

Global publics and local actors are increasingly saturated with variegated still and moving images. The important role played by images in world politics, however, remains understudied in the International Relations (IR) discipline. This article argues that the Kurdish geopolitical space is increasingly tied to a new regional and global imagination, which emanates from verbal–visual meaning-making strategies such as narrative reconstructions and pictorial representations (for example illustrations, pictograms, or photographs). The article’s investigation illustrates how the construction of new Kurdish geopolitical imagination became increasingly regionalized and internationalized during the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS), particularly after the Kobane siege in Syria in late 2014. It shows how the war between the Syrian Kurdish forces and the IS involved gendered and aesthetic signification for the global and regional audiences. Such strategies of meaning-making served as vital venues for gendering and making the threat of the IS and its “distant war” proximate, familiar and urgent for otherwise disinterested western audiences. These verbal–visual strategies vitally acted as a transmission belt between individual, state and systemic levels, turning the struggle against the IS into a globalized cultural-symbolic war. The article employs critical visual semiotics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the regional and global politics of image and offers three empirical cases to illustrate its argument: the narratives of the Kobane siege; the cartoon depicting a “Kurdish homeland” and globally circulated Kurdish female fighter photographs.     

World heritage and the local politics of memory: the Miike coal mine and fu no isan

Abstract

This article investigates the complex relations between heritage and memory through an analysis of the UNESCO World Heritage ‘Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution’ and its component Miike coal mine. When discussing this World Heritage Site, scholars and the media have focused on the diplomatic controversy over the history of forced labour between Japan and South Korea, interpreting it as a new example of a dispute over history in East Asia. However, this understanding oversimplifies the relations between heritage and memory. Based on fieldwork research and documentary analysis, this article investigates the diversity and complexity of the collective memory of Miike coal mine from a local perspective. The results show that there is a sharp dissonance between the World Heritage story and some of the ex-miners’ memories, which focus on the negative past, fu no isan. Documentary analysis shows that fu no isan has two different but closely related meanings: negative legacy and negative heritage. Fieldwork research reveals that the various commemorations of fu no isan in the local community, mainly based on ex-miners’ social networks, constitute a form of vernacular memory, independent from the official memory of the World Heritage. Finally, I conclude that heritage can be public memory, rather than just official memory, as long as it is open to plural memories of the past.     

Sport and Diplomacy: A Global Diplomacy Framework

ABSTRACT

The actors, or “players,” involved in the transactions of diplomacy occasioned by sport are manifold. In the case of the world’s “global game”—association football—they include but are not limited to individual footballers, football clubs, national leagues, national associations, football’s international governance structures, multi-national sponsors, and numerous hangers on. Importantly for this analysis, such a panoply of actors creates an architecture, replicated across other sports, which speak to the necessity of furthering the understanding of the relationship between sport and diplomacy. These two phenomena share a long-standing similarity in global affairs; both having been over-looked as means of comprehending relations between different polities otherwise centred on the nation-state. This exegesis advances our understanding in two areas. First, it addresses the parameters of the discussion of “sport and diplomacy” and problematises the discourse between the two with a note on language; and second, it utilises a framework provided by an appreciation of “global diplomacy” to explore concepts of communication, representation, and negotiation in sport and diplomacy.     

An epistemic break from “expertise”: Misunderstanding Terrorism by Marc Sageman

ABSTRACT

Professor Marc Sageman’s latest contribution to terrorism “studies” builds on an ever-increasing critique of a field in which “expertise” is something that is largely taken for granted, rather than empirically “known”. His book Misunderstanding Terrorism seeks to refocus our attention towards what is knowable through a Bayesian analysis based on his unique access to acts of terrorism within the Western world. Key, however, is his framing of what terrorism “is”, and to that effect, this review article first assesses the work of two individuals writing on terrorism, Rafaello Pantucci and Shiraz Maher, to place Sageman’s significant book within a wider context of terrorism literature.     

Wrestling with Another Human Being: The Merits of a Messy,Power-Laden Pacifism

ABSTRACT

As one of many scholars who have situated their research in terms of nonviolence (a mode of action) rather than pacifism (a philosophical position), I ask, what do we gain instead by adopting an explicitly pacifist stance, especially as a response to forms of violent extremism? First, I respond to three common dismissals of pacifism, interrogating the misguided assumptions about violence/nonviolence upon which they depend. Second, exploring recent violent encounters between white nationalist and antifa activists in the US, as well as insights from Ruddick’s “maternal thinking,” I argue that taking a principled stance against collective violence (1) has practical utility, including a protective effect, (2) forces us to wrestle with the humanity of our adversaries and our inability to ever fully control them, and (3) enables radical inclusion by requiring sustained attention to difference but also resistance to the forms of injustice and oppression this “difference” might entail. The pacifism that emerges here is messy and power laden, demanding that we continually wrestle not only with one another but with the tensions inherent in human interaction, difference, and conflict.     

Untimely Russia: Hysteresis in Russian-Western Relations over the Past Millennium

This article draws on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology to explain how a lack of fit between a repertoire of bodily practices accumulated through history, on the one hand, (here, Russian habitus) and the field in which it is employed, on the other, (here, diplomacy) can take shape in world politics. Such “hysteresis” provides a longue durée reading that challenges both the realist idea that similar outcomes are due to invariant structures and the constructivist idea that structures “socialize” states. Social stability stems from agency, more specifically, from habitus. Our empirical examples are breaking points in Russian relations with neighbors: the Rus’ and the Eurasian steppe empires (ca. 800–1500), Muscovy's diplomatic interactions with Europe, and Russia's bid to join European international society and situation during the twentieth century. In each case, Moscow's relentless quest for equal status prompted quixotic practices that were often dismissed by Western countries and hampered the security of both parties.     

“Journalism ideology” and its influence on the producers of Radio Sonder Grense radio current affairs

In the same way that people can have a political or a personal ideology, their professional identities and how they practise a craft or an occupation may be influenced by what can be labelled as a “professional ideology”. Through conducting interviews with the producers of the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) Afrikaans radio programmes Monitor, Spektrum and Naweek-Aktueel, this article reports on research which showed that there is indeed such a thing as a “journalism ideology”. The interviews focused on how “internal influences” – such as a journalist's background and training, newsroom routines – and “external influences” – such as the audience – influenced the decisions they made in choosing news stories and producing content. This “journalism ideology” influences the producers and in turn the news content of these current affairs programmes that are listened to daily by almost two million listeners. The conclusion drawn from the study is that, although the participants’ “journalism ideology” largely determines the news stories for their programmes, structural forces, newsroom routines and organisational constraints often dictate their actions. Finally, although all the participants saw themselves as “watchdogs of democracy”, internal pressures within the SABC could endanger that role.     

“Dynamite bombs of New York manufacture”: the terrorist perspective in the Stevensons,Greer and James

This article examines the first three literary reactions to Fenian terrorism: Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson’s co-written novel, The Dynamiter (1885); Tom Greer’s A Modern Daedalus (1885) and Henry James’ The Princess Casamassima (1886). Although these works approach terrorism from different angles, they set the pattern for subsequent treatments that will “give primary voice to the perspective of the terrorist”. “Zero”, the hapless bomb-makers in The Dynamiter, is a surprisingly urbane, sympathetic figure; Greer illustrates both the necessity and the moral quandaries of terrorism and James shows considerable sympathy for anarchism’s causes, even though terrorism threatens high art and culture. I also hope to show that fiction can provide excellent source material for studying the cultural imaginary of terrorism and, by extension, make a bid for the inclusion of literature scholars under the umbrella of Critical Terrorism Studies.     

Striking Home: Ideal-Type of Terrorism

ABSTRACT

This essay presents some preliminary notes in an anthropological perspective on terrorism. The following aims to be a questioning review of issues that haunt informed students of terrorism, and yet also an introductory text to the study of terrorism. It is revisionist but didactic. The essay is based on extended research of Palestinian and Israeli terrorism cases, and on critical integration of the literature on terrorism. It offers an alternative approach to the problem of the definition and distinct character of terrorism, expands on overlooked aspects of terrorism, like its relationship to the concept of “home,” emphasizes under-theorized subjects, like the randomness of the targets, and discusses hitherto untouched topics, like the “bad death” of terrorism’s victims. Terrorism is examined in terms of liminality and hybridity, and consequently as more subversive than coercive, threatening our ontological security no less than our physical security.