A recurring anarchy? The emergence of climate change as a threat to international peace and security

Robert Kaplan's 1994 article, ‘The Coming Anarchy’ was a milestone in the literature on the links between environmental change and security. The article predicted that disease, corruption, overpopulation, scarce resources and climate change would plunge West Africa into pervasive conflict. Nearly a decade and a half—and several civil wars—later this article returns to West Africa to see to what extent Kaplan's predictions have come to pass. While West Africa may not have followed exactly the trajectory that Kaplan foresaw, he did correctly predict that climate change would be recognised as a threat to international security. This paper reviews in greater detail the development of conceptualisations of environment and security that influence current discussions over the potential impacts of climate change on security, paying particular attention to the ways in which West Africa is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.     

The war in Afghanistan: its background and future prospects

If the West loses in Afghanistan and its region, the most important reason will be that we are pursuing several different goals simultaneously, most of which are in contradiction to the others. Western governments need to choose between these goals, and co-ordinate a strategy in pursuit of the most desirable and achievable ones. The creation of a democratic Afghanistan needs to be recognised as a hopeless fantasy. Instead, the West should imitate the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and concentrate on creating an effective military force that can survive Western withdrawal and continue to fight the Taleban. In the meantime, something to be avoided at all costs is the further destabilisation of Pakistan, since Pakistan in the end constitutes a far greater potential threat to the region, the West and the world than does Afghanistan.     

Transnational Dialogue in an Age of Terror

11 September led many people to dismiss the prospects for a meaningful dialogue between Islam and the West. This article argues that the terrorist attacks against the United States also created the potential for a new kind of dialogue by initiating a virtually unprecedented issue-specific global public sphere focused on the question of the relations between Islam and the West. It draws on Habermas to consider the potential for dialogue under contemporary conditions. By examining the constructivist foundations of both Islamist and neoconservative approaches to international politics, this article posits both a demand for and an important potential supply for a meaningful dialogue. In particular, it discusses the intense and important public arguments within the Islamic world about the concept of dialogue and its political possibilities. It focuses upon the internal arguments between moderates and extremists on both sides, and considers how dialogue (or its absence) can change the terms of the interaction by breaking the monopoly over representation claimed by – and too often granted to – radicals.     

肯尼迪政府与印（尼）荷西伊里安领土争端的和平解决（1961—1962）

西伊里安争端，是荷兰与印尼因西伊里安地区的主权移交问题而引发的一场长达10余年的领土争端，争端在1960年代初发展为危机事态，双方一度将形势推到战争的边缘。美国作为印（尼）荷之间的主要平衡力量，长期以来奉行亲荷的消极中立政策。肯尼迪政府上台后，经过曲折的转变，最终改变了美国以往在该问题上的消极政策，通过积极的外交斡旋和联合国的干预，使这场区域领土危机得以和平解决。探讨肯尼迪政府对西伊里安问题的决策转变过程对研究冷战与反殖民主义的关系，以及分析美国处理他国领土问题的外交政策具：育重要意义。     

Conversations in Istanbul: An interview with Bulent Ecevit

Turkey, a strategically located but often unappreciated ally of the West, receives inadequate attention in Western media. It has served as a crucial element of Western defense during the cold war and is a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. The following interview with former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit examines the Turkish perspective on important Turkish foreign and domestic issues, specifically focusing on: Arab‐Israeli conflict, Turkish‐Greek dispute over Cyprus, Turkish relations with the Arabs, Turkish relations with the United States and West European countries, Arab relations with the West, and internal Turkish political affairs.     

War and the West

The outline of human history over the last two thousand years is framed by armed conflict. Many would like to overlook this simple historical reality, and the perilous consequences of ignoring military affairs. The advantage the West now enjoys is the product of several developments in political and social domains culminating in what can be called a Military Revolution. The creation of powerful states as the overarching social organization is an example of one such revolution, which supported a series of smaller innovations and changes in the way the West fought its wars. These smaller changes are “revolutions in military affairs.” These revolutions do not have to be tied to technology. Britain generated an advantage over France by creating a financial system which substantially altered its ability to sustain the conduct of war in the eighteenth century. History reveals the degree of political, social, economic and technological adaptation needed to maximize security and minimize the consequences of failure. The study of history is necessary to insure that we do not have to fight wars more often, or at far higher cost in human terms.     

The Global Importance of Illiberal Moderates

In contrast to the claim that the most significant fault line in contemporary global affairs is between the civilisation of the West and all others, this essay argues that the schism between those who advance their values through violence and those who rely on persuasion, both of which are present in all civilisations, is the greatest source of conflict in the post-Cold-War era. Moderates come in many stripes: some are liberal, such as Reform Jews and Social Democrats, while most others are illiberal, including many Muslim religious leaders. All moderates, however, share in common a principled rejection of violence. Polls and reports from around the world bear out that a conviction of the value of persuasion over coercion does not depend on faith in democracy or secularism. The West should ally itself with such moderates, no matter how liberal or illiberal their orientation.     

Russo–Iranian Relations in the Post-Soviet Era

The West has shunned the Islamic Republic of Iran for most of the past 38 years. To neutralise the very negative impact that this situation has had on the country’s economy and political isolation, Iran has turned to the East, in particular to China and Russia, a change in orientation despite Iran’s traditional preference for the West. Since the Soviet Union’s demise, Iran and Russia have steadily been expanding co-operation in trade, regional security, nuclear technology, military issues, and oil and natural gas exploration and marketing. Yet both Powers have cautiously approached one other. The degree of expansion or contraction in co-operation has depended considerably on whether relations between the West and Russia have been amicable or hostile. Historically speaking, Great Power rivalry over Iran has worked better for Tehran than when these Powers have taken a unified policy, as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Ukraine's relations with the west: disinterest,partnership, disillusionment

Ukraine's relations with the West have gone through three periods of development since 1992. When relations with Ukraine have improved this has tended to be at the same time as relations between the West and Russia declined, and vice-versa. The first period is disinterest during 1992–94 when the West prioritised relations with a reformist Russia. The second period was 1995–99 when Ukraine and the West developed a strategic partnership. From 2000, Ukraine's relations with the West are best described as disillusionment due to the growing gap between official rhetoric of integration into Euro-Atlantic structures and Eurasian domestic policies.     

‘The limits of international leadership’: The Eisenhower administration,East‐West trade and the cold war, 1953–54

This article examines the Eisenhower administration's trade policy towards the Soviet Union in 1953–54. It argues, contrary to previous scholarship on the subject, that the liberalization of East‐West trade controls in August 1954 cannot be attributed solely to the presidential leadership of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Instead, whilst Eisenhower played a significant role in changing American embargo policy, it was the Churchill government which provided the impetus required for the revision of the international export control lists. Despite conflict and confrontation over the shape and contents of the new embargo between Washington and London, the two governments forged a compromise in the summer of 1954.     

From De-Europeanisation to Anti-Western Populism: Turkish Foreign Policy in Flux

ABSTRACT

Recent Turkish foreign policy (TFP) under the successive AKP governments has seen different populist turns. A clear distinction can be made between the thin and thick populisms of TFP, based on the status of the West. The first decade of AKP rule, when foreign policy was thinly populist, was characterised by steady de-Europeanisation, increasing engagement with regional issues and a decentring of Turkey’s Western orientation. The turn toward thick populism has been characterised by anti-Westernist discourses in which the West is resituated as the ‘other’ of Turkish political identity.     

An unfulfilling partnership: Ukraine and the West, 1991–2001

The political crisis in Ukraine in early 2001 and then the terrorist attacks against the US and the resulting dramatic change of international setting have sealed the trend that had emerged much earlier: the once promising partnership between Ukraine and the West has ended up in mutual unhappiness. As the West is discovering new ‘geopolitical pivots’ in the aftermath of 11 September, Ukraine has almost disappeared from the radar screen of Western attention. Yet for good reasons what happens in Ukraine, a currently uncertain and weakened country with a poor international reputation, still matters for the West. There has always been a close link between Ukraine's transition and Western attitudes towards Ukraine. This might be the moment to think afresh about past and future Western policies vis‐à‐vis Ukraine.     

HIV/AIDS and governance along the corridors of conflict in West Africa

West Africa demonstrates a sub-regional pattern of violence and political instability that has engulfed Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and now extends out from these states through corridors of violent conflict throughout the region; both physical and figurative. This article makes two arguments. That HIV/AIDS has developed a complex inter-relationship with violent conflict in the West African sub-region; and that the presence of HIV/AIDS in West Africa in zones of violent conflict is not given the recognition needed by the international policy community. The neglect of West Africa in the Pan-African response to HIV/AIDS, and the intractability of the region's Complex Political Emergencies, is creating an emerging phenomenon of Complex Human Emergency in the region. An acknowledged gap exists in social analyses of HIV/AIDS between policy speculations and the actual evidence base that these are built upon. Instead of speculative theorizing, this article presents seven key questions that need to be asked about HIV/AIDS and conflict in West Africa, in order to begin the process of serious policy research on the issue.     

西方世界深陷三重危机

西方的金融危机导致财政状况空前恶化,引发主权债务危机,主权债务危机的扩散造成金融市场和实体经济剧烈震荡,西方世界进入"财政危机—金融动荡—经济停滞"的严重恶性循环中,经济财政危机引起了西方社会对资本主义体制的再思考。     

The China effect in anxious Europe

The world economy is going through a testing time and Europe’s concerns are understandable. Much attention has been focused on the rise of Asia, especially the economic performance of China during the past decades. There seems to be anxiety about the loss of economic dynamism in the West when compared with the growing confidence in Asia. This essay surveys some of the reasons for anxiety, from those that are common to the global economy to those that arise specifically from the problem of China. It identifies the source as the perceived power shifts in the Pacific and Indian oceans that affect American interests and indirectly those of Europe. While future generations of Europeans need to know Asia better, this is no different from the need for Asians to understand the West, something Asians have been trying to do for over a century. There is no reason why Europeans cannot do that quickly and well.     

The role of religion in Islamist radicalisation processes

ABSTRACT

This article attempts to bridge the gap between social and religious explanations for Islamist radicalisation in the West by understanding the role of religion through the under-utilised perspective of sociology of religious emotions and Wiktorowicz’s concept of cognitive openness. The article draws on interviews with 23 different actors with first-hand knowledge of Islamist radicalisation, and analyses five in-depth interviews with former so-called radicals, four of whom were converts to Islam. The analysis thus has a special focus on the narratives and experiences of converts to radical Islamist worldviews. The radicalisation process of the formers was characterised by an interplay between context specific experiences and individual religiosity. There are social causes for seeking religion as it can provide an emotional meaningfulness in a state of cognitive openness connected to personal family social background, which can stretch over a long period. However, the interviews also show that religiosity affects the social: the religious emotions within radical Islamist groups create a tight-knit community of self-perceived righteous believers, tied to an emotional experience of empowerment that amplifies their radicalisation. The article concludes that the primary role of religion is to structure and direct the emotions from which so-called radical Islamists think and act within religious frameworks.     

The West that is not in the West: identifying the self in Oriental modernity

This paper discusses the meaning of ‘the West’ in Chinese and Japanese political discourse. It argues that for Japanese and Chinese political thinkers, the West does not exist in the West. Rather, the West is sometimes at the periphery and, at other times, at the centre. For them, ‘the Chinese’ is about the epistemology of all-under-heaven. There is no such concept as ‘Other’ in this epistemology. As a result, modern Western thinkers depend on opposing the concrete, historical, yet backward Other to pretend to be universal, while Chinese and Japanese thinkers concentrate on self-rectification to compete for the best representative of ‘the Chinese’ in world politics. ‘The Chinese’ is no more than an epistemological frame that divides the world into the centre and the periphery. In modern times, the Japanese have accepted Japan as being at the periphery of world politics, while the West is at the centre. To practise self-rectification is to simulate the West. The West is therefore not the geographical West, but at the centre of Japanese selfhood. Self-knowledge produced through Othering and that through self-rectification are so different that the universal West could not make sense of the all-under-heaven way of conceptualizing the West.     

Japan's Search for the ‘Sweet Spot’: International Cooperation and Regional Security in Northeast Asia

To analyze how Japan's competing objectives and specific policies have been evolving and how they trade off in today's regional security situation, this article argues that shifting Japanese foreign and security policies in Northeast Asia can be understood as ongoing responses to tensions along three key axes. First Japan confronts a tension between bilateralism and multilateralism; second Japan's economic and security interests are often at odds, and third, Japan still struggles with the competing pulls exerted by Asia on the one hand and the West (most particularly the United States) on the other.     

With Friends Like These: Brinkmanship and Chain-Ganging in Russia's Near Abroad

Unrecognized statelets may be forming in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine under the aegis of Russian protection—a “frozen conflict.” Georgia's past provides a useful cautionary tale in reference to Ukraine's probable future. The very same conceptual debates that are currently underway in the West with respect to Ukraine—“credibility of great-power security guarantees versus chain-ganging”—have, over the past twenty years, generated policies that facilitated the rise of political coalitions within Georgia that prefer war with Russia to any other outcome.     

Russia-North Korea Economic Ties: Is There More Than Meets the Eye?

Russia's relations with North Korea are often ignored in the West. The conventional view is that Russia's role with respect to the North is purely political and diplomatic, predicated on Russia's permanent membership in the UN Security Council. Often overlooked is the fact that Russia maintains a range of economic links with the DPRK. Taken together, they constitute quite a substantial leverage that Russia can exercise over North Korea, when and if it chooses to do so. The paper aims to investigate the economic dimension of the Russia-North Korea relationship. The article also examines North Korea's domestic economic situation, mostly drawing upon Russian expert assessments.