Japanese Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Balancing Economy and Security

Abstract

Although the quest for oil has long been a central concern for resource-poor Japan, its foreign policy in the Middle East does not simply reflect a mercantilist interest in the region's resources. Its desire to remain close to the United States during the North Korea crisis and its nascent competition with China are also critical factors in Japan's Middle East policy. However, Japan lacks an integrated strategy toward the Middle East and as a result the various components of its policy are not always compatible. Hence, while Japan has firmly backed the Bush administration's Iraq policies, and begun discussing a possible free-trade agreement with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, it has also, until quite recently, simultaneously pursued closer relations with Iran. In lieu of coherent regional strategy, Japan instead possesses a clearly prioritized sense of its interests in the region.     

The British Empire in India,the Gulf pearl and the making of the Middle East

Abstract

Genealogies of the term ‘Middle East’ conventionally focus on a juncture around the 1890s, when it gained new geopolitical currency, promoted by various European and American officials with reference to a space centred around the Arabo-Persian Gulf. This article argues instead that the ‘Middle East’ label should be seen as the culmination of a longer process, led less from London than from India. Over the previous century, this consolidation of ‘British’ India as a distinct regional actor was accompanied by the conceptualisation of its borderlands, including that Gulf-centred space. This space become a theatre for economic and political monitoring strategised from India, seeking to transform what was represented as a pirate-infested margin into a pacified buffer zone. Control and exploitation of pearl fisheries, the main economic activity for Gulf populations, was central to these efforts. Imperial strategy around the Gulf pearl was a key tool in founding an informal Indian empire in the Gulf and its hinterlands, in that very space to which the name ‘Middle East’ would subsequently be given.     

Paiens unt dreit? Reversed dichotomy and the East in Boeve de Haumtone and Bevis of Hampton

ABSTRACT

It is usually accepted that Saracens are evil and Christians are good in medieval narratives. The common medieval thought towards binary opposition can be pointed out by the Chanson de Roland: ‘paiens unt tort e Chrestiens unt dreit’. However, it seems that there is religious prejudice and ignorance towards the Saracens and their geographical location, the East. The Anglo-Norman Boeve de Haumtone is an early medieval narrative that focuses on cross-cultural interaction within a framework that combines political, social and religious events with geographical exploration both in the East and the West. Similarly, Bevis of Hampton is the Middle English version that reshapes the socio historical and religious events on which their sources have focused. The aim of this article is to explore the idea that another East existed during the Middle Ages. This article will address the question of what relation Boeve de Haumtone and Bevis of Hampton might have to crusading geography. It will be argued how and why the East is not portrayed as a scary, evil place as it is in other contemporary romances, and the evidence for this may be presented by the hero’s preference for living in the East for the rest of his life.     

Libyan Aspirations

This article is a lecture delivered by a former member of theCivil Affairs Branch, Middle East, at a combined meeting withthe Royal Empire Society on the 27th November. It is designedin some sort as a companion to Brigadier Longrigg‘s analysisof Eritrea, published in African Affairs for October, and itmay also be read with Dr. Evans-Pritchard’s Italy andthe Bedouin in Cyrenaica in the journal for January 1946.     

Shi’i division over the Iraqi state: decentralization and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq

ABSTRACT

This article traces the evolving political platform of one of Iraq’s oldest and most powerful Shi’i political parties, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). Drawing on an analysis of 15 years of primary materials produced by ISCI, it focuses principally on their promotion of decentralization as a path towards peace and stability in Iraq. However, the article also traces the origins of a deep schism that emerged within ISCI between the movement’s old guard who were beholden to the Iranian regime and their model of vilāyat-i faqīh, and the youth-led Iraqi nationalist faction who wanted to see the instalment of a civil government without religious oversight. The article demonstrates that this division is indicative of a theological debate between Shi’i religious scholars over differing interpretations of the role of Shi’ism in politics. The article concludes by arguing that understanding the extent to which such esoteric religious debates manifest themselves politically is crucial to interpreting divisions within Shi’ism not just in Iraq, but across the broader Middle East.     

Evolving structure of collective bargaining in Turkey (1990–2005)

ABSTRACT

Following the June 1967 Six-Day War, the Soviet Union and Britain invested significant efforts in rehabilitating their relations with the Arab countries, notably Egypt. While both supported the withdrawal of Israel from the Arab-occupied territories, the two countries differed over the nature of the settlement. Still, at the UN Security Council, the Soviet Union supported the British draft resolution for solving the Middle East conflict. Cold War interests and competition over influence in the Middle East, however, led the Soviets to launch a public campaign against British policy in the Middle East and prevented the two countries from joining efforts to bring about a breakthrough in the Arab–Israeli conflict.     

Cyprus and EU enlargement to the Western Balkans: a balancing act*

Abstract

Cyprus’ commitment to the European perspective of the Western Balkans is shaped by a range of factors. As well as balancing its national interests, it also aims to stand by a ‘position of principles’ on conflict issues. It equally seeks to be a reliable partner to the EU and move closer to its Western allies, while accommodating its Eastern ones. Nevertheless, over the last 10 years, Nicosia has Europeanised its policies and thinking. This has seen it reach out to Kosovo to try and build de facto relations. However, since the ‘national problem’ remains at the core of its foreign policy, relations with ‘motherland’ Greece are also key. This has in turn complicated dealings with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Overall, Cyprus remains more firmly focused on the Middle East, making it a rather peripheral actor in the Western Balkan countries’ EU integration process.     

The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan: International Reactions,Military Intelligence and British Diplomacy

From the outset the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was strongly condemned by Britain and all the other NATO member states, by the non-aligned group and by key countries in Asia and the Middle East. During the first days following the invasion, London worked for the speedy build-up of a diplomatic consensus, while the Carter administration was still in a state of surprise and some confusion. It is evident that the single factor that led many countries to join forces diplomatically was the fear of further Soviet adventurism in Asia and the Middle East; uninformed, alarmist assessments of Soviet intentions played a major part in cementing a diplomatic coalition, which led to the condemnation of Moscow in the UN General Assembly – predictably, the Soviets had vetoed a Security Council resolution. Simply put, the fear of war led to something of a panic among non-aligned nations, which in turn convinced them to back western diplomacy.     

China and the competition for oil and gas in Asia

While its economic dynamism stimulates continued growth in Asia, China's increasing demand for energy is creating intense competition, particularly with Japan, over international sources of supply. Domestic fields have generally been disappointing, as have efforts to pipe gas from Central Asia and Russia to the east coast. Consequently, China is not only paying greater attention to potential petroleum resources in the East and South China Seas, but also considering the vulnerability of its sea-lanes to the Middle East and beyond. Its need to diversify has promoted closer relations with Central Asia, the Middle East, and the oil producing countries of Africa and Latin America, but the jury is out on whether China's concerns for secure energy supply will lead to international cooperation against terrorism or fuel the already heated competition for oil and gas. As China continues to assure its future energy security in Asia and many areas of the world, sustained bilateral and multilateral diplomacy to reconcile disputes and avoid conflict will become more important than ever.     

Concession or compromise? The politics of abortion in United Germany

Most GDR policies instituted to secure women's equality between 1949 and 1989 have been dismantled in the name of German unity, including freedom of choice regarding abortion. That right ceased to exist in May 1993, when the Constitutional Court imposed a number of western restrictions on eastern women as the new law of the land. This study addresses the post‐unity search for an acceptable compromise between the western constitutional mandate of foetal protection and the eastern guarantee of a woman's right to choose. It argues that a three‐year reform process which should have provided a positive introduction to the art of democratic compromise served instead as a negative socialising experience for Germans in the new Lander. Besides denying them a chance to render a meaningful policy contribution to their new state, the nature of the process has distorted East German perceptions of the quintessential ‘balance of power’ between legislative and judicial institutions under democracy. ‘Compromise’ has been attained, but consequences for the German Rechtsstaat are not all positive.     

The EU and the Syrian Crisis: The Use of Sanctions and the Regime's Strategy for Survival

The Syrian crisis has from May 2011 and onwards been met by the EU with rounds of tightening sanctions attempting to put pressure on the Syrian regime and the elites surrounding it. Based on a typology for the sanctions and a periodization showing how the measures have proceeded, the article discusses the EU sanctions and to what degree they have influenced the situation in Syria. Furthermore, the article sheds light on regional and international dimensions of EU policies towards Syria and demonstrates how the policies are met with the Syrian regime's ability to adapt to conditions related to changing internal and external challenges. The article concludes that what in the first phases of the EU sanctions against Syria represented a deviation from the traditional pragmatic EU policies vis-à-vis the Middle East, seems during the latest phase to be followed by a more cautious approach, which also takes security concerns into consideration.     

Social cohesion for the unfinished business of land reform in South Africa

Abstract

This article aims to discuss social cohesion as an alternative instrument to address the ever dragging land question in South Africa. Although there are various activities that have been undertaken and policy programmes that have been proposed, all those initiatives have not been able to completely translate land reform policy into practice as intended. Other than recognising the ‘willing seller-willing buyer’ policy which appears not to have been internalised by the stakeholders concerned, this article also presents a transformative approach for both white land owners and black emerging farmers to work together in a tolerant and amicable manner. The most critical step that is required for land reform in the whole country is a public consultation process for government to be able to engage with all parties and to put a list of informed alternatives on the table for discussion. Obviously, that includes the willing seller willing buyer policy. Based on the outcomes of such discussions, the government has to play a mediation role to heal the racial division caused by the Natives Land Act of 1913. In short, this discussion presents social cohesion to heal the past without land owners perceiving transformation policies as apartheid in reverse.     

Recent Russian works on the republic of Turkey

The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951: Arab Nationalism, The United States and Postwar Imperialism by William Roger Louis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 803pp.

In Defence of British India: Great Britain and the Middle East 1775–1842 by Edward Ingram. London: Frank Cass &; Co., 1984. Pp.xviii + 236, maps. £25.

The Shadow of God and the Hidden Imam: Religion, Political Order and Societal Change in Shi'ite Iran From the Beginning to 1890 by Said Amir Arjomand. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Pp.xi + 356. £23.75.

Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot. 1883–1961, by Jacob M. Landau. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch‐Archeologisch Instituut, 1984. Pp.IX + 362. Dfl.65.50.

L'Italia in Asia Minore, by Marta Petricioli. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1983. Pp. 478. Lire 32,000.

Anglo‐Iranian Relations During World War I, by Wm. J. Olson. London: Frank Cass &; Co., 1984. Pp.xii + 305. £25.     

Noble Robbers,avengers and entrepreneurs: Eric Hobsbawm and Banditry in Iran,the Middle East and North Africa

Banditry has been endemic across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the Middle Eastern experience of banditry has thus far failed to receive sustained academic attention. In particular, the debates stimulated by Eric Hobsbawm's thesis of social banditry have elicited only a few responses from scholars of the Middle East and North Africa, and these largely negative. This article asks to what extent the recent work done in the field of ‘Bandit studies’ helps to elucidate the experience of the Middle East and North Africa. Why has there been such a lack of interest in banditry when the phenomenon itself, and rural crime in general, was so widespread? Why are so few individual bandits celebrated or reviled? What do we mean by banditry in the Middle Eastern context, who became a bandit, why and in what circumstances, what did bandits do and how was this perceived by elites and subalterns, what were the connections between bandits and peasants and between bandits and the worlds of power and, perhaps most importantly, who has written about bandits and what sources have they used?     

Unifying voices,creating publics: the uses of media form in contemporary Jordanian radio

ABSTRACT

Questions of media form have not received sufficient attention in recent studies of Arabic-language media. In Jordanian radio today, however, media form is a highly relevant discursive resource for broadcasters, who strategically invoke the ways in which different types of media communication are conceived and framed, in a metapragmatic manner that goes beyond the impact of merely technical distinctions between media forms. This article examines two examples of this process: the ‘unification’ of radio station voices in a memorial programme for a martyred fighter pilot broadcast in February 2015, where radio’s limitation to sound was used ideologically to assert national unity; and references to digital media on morning talk show programmes, which allow hosts to define audiences and forms of participation in radio conversations. These metapragmatic framings of media form, further, produce specific publics for Jordanian radio: groupings that include, and legitimize, certain segments of listenership—such as ‘true’ Jordanians or ‘the Jordanian people’—while implicitly excluding others. Grounded firmly in discursive data, this article thus provides much-needed nuance to our understanding of mass media in the Arabic-speaking Middle East today—and, ultimately, the genuine significance of media form in its social and cultural context.     

Review essay: Agrarian transformation,agrarian struggles,and Marxist analyses of the peasantry

Abstract

After some years of living in an Indian village, on family land that by the standards of most Marxist scholars puts us in the category of “capitalist farmers” or “kulaks,” I find myself taking scholarly discussion of “agrarian transformation” and “agrarian class structure” quite personally. There is something that jars against the reality of a daily life that includes hauling water for household use in the morning, enduring frequent blackouts or “load sheddings,” trying to decide whether to purchase first a TV or a refrigerator or a washing machine and not really being able to afford any of them, to be told that in moving from a salaried position in a U.S. university to an Indian village one has made a class jump upwards, from a section of the “expanded working class” or at worst “petty bourgeoisie” to membership among the capitalists and even (according to some scholars) participation in India's “ruling bloc.”     

Conflict resolution and regional co-operation: The role of the Gulf Co-operation Council 1970–2002

The Middle East: a Political and Economic Survey edited by Peter Mansfield. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Fourth edition, Pp. xi + 591, 3 maps, statistical appendices, reading list, index. £5.50.

Islam in History: Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East by Bernard Lewis. Alcove Press, London, 1973, 349 pp., index, £5 net.

The Private Life of Islam by Ian Young, London, Allen Lane, 1974, pp vii + 308; £3.25.     

Oil,arms procurement and security in the Persian gulf

Professor Anoushiravan Ehteshami is Professor of International Relations at the University of Durham. He is also Vice-President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). His most recent publications include The Foreign Policies of Middle East States (co-editor, 2002), Iran and Eurasia (co-editor, 2000) and The Changing Balance of Power in Asia (1998).     

Land Acquisition,Investment, and Development in the Lao Coffee Sector: Successes and Failures

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted. Looking at the coffee sector in Laos, the authors of this article explore dimensions of the land grab debate that have not yet been sufficiently examined. Coffee concessionaires in southern Laos often fail to use all of the land granted them and fail to produce high yields on the land they do use. Thus, the authors challenge the often-assumed superiority and effectiveness of large-scale versus small-scale production, specifically the argument that they modernize agricultural production and optimize land use. They argue that examining failed investments is as important as studying successful ones for understanding the implications of the land grabbing phenomenon for social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Knowledge about the scale of “failed land deals” provides important motivation for national governments to close the gap between intentions and actual outcomes. This article engages with the current debate on quality of investment and challenges the approach of employing land concessions as a vehicle for economic development in the Lao coffee sector and in other sectors and countries.     

Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP): a qualitative review of the literature

ABSTRACT

The Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydo?u Anadolu Projesi, GAP) is one of the largest regional development projects ever implemented in the Middle East. Launched officially in the 1970s to develop the water and land resources of southeastern Turkey, GAP has over time evolved from a predominantly technical, largely state-led and mainly infrastructural and economic development-oriented project into a primarily social, largely market-friendly and chiefly sustainable and human development-oriented project. Parallel to this evolution, GAP has grown more visible in political and public discourses. The implications of the project, for instance, on the ecology and cultural heritages, on the Kurdish Question, and on water issue among Turkey, Syria and Iraq have become clearer. However, despite growing academic and policy interest on GAP, there has been no attempt to provide a literature review on the project. Even more than 40 years after GAP was begun, a bird’s eye view of researched and under-researched topics in the literature has not been introduced yet. This article seeks to present a qualitative review of GAP-related literature. In this way, it seeks to constitute an initial step to establish a base for more expansive reviews and to provide guidance to interested and involved researchers, practitioners and policymakers.