Russia and the Iraq War: was Putin's policy a failure?

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has been faced with numerous crises since coming to office in 2000, most importantly the war in Chechnya, the Iraq War was the first major international crisis with which his administration was confronted. As in the case of Kosovo for Yeltsin, and the Gulf War for Gorbachev, the Russian President had to deal with conflicting domestic pressures and apparently still more conflicting Russian national and international interests. Indeed, one result of such a situation was a post-war accusation that Putin actually had no policy or at least no consistent policy with regard to the Iraq crisis [Golan, G., 1992. Gorbachev's difficult time in the Gulf. Political Science Quarterly 107 (2), 213–230]. One may remember similar accusations of Gorbachev's “zigzaging” in the Gulf War and claims that the Yeltsin government failed to forge a Kosovo policy altogether [Levitin, O., 2000. Inside Moscow's Kosovo muddle. Survival 42 (1), 130]. Yet, a certain pattern did appear to repeat itself in the Iraqi crisis, namely, pre-war efforts to prevent a military conflict from breaking out, then gradual escalation of rhetoric if not actual involvement, and finally gradual but relatively rapid retreat to conciliatory posture toward the United States (in all three crises). Moreover, Putin was indeed consistent throughout the pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods in his opposition to the Americans' use of force against Iraq and in the need to remain within a United Nations framework. Actually, one might ask (and we shall below) why Putin did not abandon the first part of this policy, in order to maintain the second component, when it became certain that the U.S. was going to attack with or without UN Security Council approval.     

The Rise of Militant Islam and the Security State in the Era of the ‘Long War’

This paper distinguishes between political and militant Islam and analyses the latter's current ability to confront empire and to become a social force in Muslim-majority states. This analysis is within the dialectic of collaboration and resistance, starting with client postcolonial states' pivotal role in bringing to fruition the collaboration between political Islam and US imperialism during the cold war era. The post-cold war period signals the imperialist putsch to confront militant Islam in the ‘Long War’ by employing the cold war strategy of ‘permanent war’ and universalising the idea of the security state. Militant Islam's resistance to the Long War and the security state makes this two-pronged imperial strategy a losing proposition for the USA. Paradoxically this strategy has also become the prime mover for militant Islam's ascendancy. The paper addresses the paradox of the USA's continuation with its losing Long War strategy and securitisation agenda which, although providing succour to militant Islam, is also achieving its larger objectives to buttress capitalist globalism; fuel the military–industrial and security–industrial complexes; and support ‘big oil’.     

‘Mimicking’ the West? Russia's legitimization discourse from Georgia war to the annexation of Crimea

The 2008 Georgia war represented a turning point in Russian foreign policy. It was for the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when Moscow invaded an independent country and for the first time when two members of the Council of Europe fought against each other. A premiere for Russian post-Soviet foreign policy was registered in 2014 too. The annexation of Crimea represented the first incorporation of foreign territories by Moscow since World War II. These two events generated the West's protest and blatantly contradict Russia's proclaimed foreign policy discourse centered around the respect for states' sovereignty and equality of actors in the international system. Starting from the assertion that the formulation of Russia's foreign policy is determined by the West's international behavior – Moscow looking whether to emulate or to find alternatives to it; the present paper will compare Russia's legitimization arguments for the 2008 war and the 2014 annexation of Crimea trying to assess how Moscow answers Western criticism and whether there is a continuity in Russian official legitimization narratives.     

Symbolic Politics and Wartime Front Regional Identity: ‘The City of Military Glory’ Project in the Smolensk Region

Focusing on Smolensk Oblast’, one of the fiercest battlegrounds of both World War II and the Napoleonic War of 1812, this study analyses small-town responses to the Russian government’s ‘City of Military Glory’ war commemoration project implemented in 2006. By examining the ways in which local authorities and local residents redefined identities in the former wartime front region by reinventing local war symbols and reinterpreting local war memories, the article focuses on the central government’s success at mobilising local patriotism from below and the success of local authorities in consolidating local identity using war memories.     

Keynes and the Non-neutrality of Russian War Finance during World War One

This article examines the particular methods of war finance that were used by Russia during World War One in relation to the total cost of the war, and evaluates them against a theoretical ideal that was outlined by the Cambridge economist J. M. Keynes. It then asks whether there were any consequences of two particular chosen means of financing the war—the issue of large amounts of paper currency and short-term treasury bills—for maintaining Russian economic stability. The evaluations of a number of Russian and British economists are used as gauges of Keynes's advice, and also as more general comparison in relation to the equivalent policies pursued by other Allied countries.     

'Portrait of a profession revisited'

On the walls of my private office hang the photographs of my seven distinguished predecessors as Secretary of the Cabinet. I sometimes find myself staring at them for inspiration, not always successfully I admit. A week or two ago I found myself looking at the great Lord Bridges, Secretary of the Cabinet and War Cabinet from 1938 to 1946. I wondered what he would have made of it if in the space of a week one of his predecessors had published an article in The Spectator advertised as ‘The Descent of the Civil Servant’ and another had appeared on the Frost programme to reassure the world that the Service was still in good shape. Both predecessors, Lords Butler and Armstrong, I hasten to say, were acting in the most supportive spirit and spoke from what for all of us is a deeply shared view of the role of the Civil Service. But, staring at Bridges, I could see a bubble emerging from his mouth enquiring: what precisely is happening on your watch, Sir Richard?     

Crossing the “bridge of Iron Chains”: A Variant Account

Synopsis

During the War of Resistance Against Japan, President Roosevelt sent Joseph Stilwell to China as a representative of the American government to assist in commanding the Chinese army in its war against Japan. No sooner had Stilwell begun than contradictions cropped up between Jiang Jieshi and himself on series of problems. All those in historical circles know this, but in their past discussions they have not elaborated on exactly which contradictions were most prominent. This paper attempts to reexamine and discuss historically a series of conflicts that arose between Stilwell and Jiang Jieshi and the reasons for them. We solicit corrections by those in historical circles.     

Grasping the Syrian War,a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.     

The threat to the U.S.

The Vietnam War had a major impact on the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The war helped to split the struggle for social justice at the very time that it was achieving its greatest successes. The factionalism over whether or not to support the war decimated the crusade for human equality.     

An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Israeli society has changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war, a change that is reflected in the bereavement discourse. Attitudes have shifted from the unquestioned justification of military losses prior to the First Lebanon War (1982) to the emergence of an antiwar bereavement discourse after the war and during the South Lebanon war of attrition that followed it. More recently, following the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a discourse that accepts losses has emerged. While the retreat from the hegemonic discourse prior to the First Lebanon War is explained by the changing attitudes to military sacrifice among the social elites, the latter shift took place in parallel with the alteration of the social composition of the Israeli Defence Force. It is argued that the social composition of the military affects the level of sensitivity to losses. While secular upper-middle class groups tend to show a high level of sensitivity to war losses, which they then translate into a subversive bereavement discourse, religious and peripheral groups with a hawkish agenda are more tolerant of military losses, or, alternatively, may seek to avoid excessive casualties by improving the military’s performance or the quality of the political directives.

Russian Economic Nationalism during the First World War: Moscow Merchants and Commercial Diasporas

While accounts of the end of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires have often stressed the rise of Turkish and German nationalisms, narratives of the Romanov collapse have generally not portrayed Russian nationalism as a key factor. In fact, scholars have either stressed the weaknesses of Russian national identity in the populace or the generally pragmatic approach of the government, which, as Hans Rogger classically phrased it, “opposed all autonomous expressions of nationalism, including the Russian.” In essence, many have argued, the regime was too conservative to embrace Russian nationalism, and it most often “subordinated all forms of the concept of nationalism to the categories of dynasty and empire.” Recently, two authors have challenged the predominantly pessimistic portrayals of the extent of Russian national identity in late imperial Russia, focusing on peasant responses to the First World War. Scott Seregny makes a strong case that while peasants may not have been full “Russians” by 1914, the spread of politics and literacy to the countryside through the zemstvos was rapidly integrating peasants into a broader civic identity. Josh Sanborn argues that even though responses were varied and in fact protest against the war quite frequent, the important thing is that both positive and negative responses were expressed within a single national political framework and discourse. In response, S. A. Smith grants that the war strengthened rather than weakened national identity, but thinks Sanborn and Seregny underestimate the degree to which nation, empire, and class pulled in different directions from 1916, concluding that “by the summer of 1917, politics had become polarized between an imperial language of nation, used mainly by the privileged and educated strata, an anti-imperial language, used mainly by the elites of the non-Russian nationalities, and a language of class, used mainly by the subaltern classes.”     

Turkish foreign policy in the post-Arab Spring era: from proactive to buffer state

Our globalising world is presently in a state of global turmoil. Risk, uncertainty, and insecurity are the terms that shape global/regional/national/local affairs and developments. The refugee crisis and the war against ISIL constitute the twin crises creating seismic impacts and consequences that in turn escalate risk and turmoil. Turkey is situated at the heart of these two crises, being very much affected by them and, therefore, perceived as a pivotal actor in the way in which the West is dealing with them. Yet, the West’s current instrumentalist and functionalist approach to Turkey as a buffer state designed to contain these two crises in the MENA does not offer an effective and sustainable solution to these crises, much less provide the stability and order that is direly needed in regional and global affairs.     

Cross-sector collaboration in times of crisis: findings from a study of the Funing tornado in China

ABSTRACT

The recent occurrence of several large-scale crises, such as the Wenchuan and Yaan earthquakes, the Gansu mudslides, the Tianjin port blast, and the Funing tornado, has led decision makers in China to increasingly recognise the need to engage non-government organizations (NGOs) in responding to crises. In this study, we establish a framework to analyse collaboration between government and NGOs during crises. This framework consists of four levels for cross-sector collaboration, and six conditions explaining them. The framework is used to analyse a case study on collaboration between local government and NGOs during the Funing tornado. Collaboration occurred at the information sharing and action coordination levels. We conclude the formal collaboration between government and NGOs in this case was still limited and it was not based on negotiations and interactions. Instead, it was essentially hierarchical and control-oriented. This type of collaboration might have the advantage of responding to crises in an effective way, but it comes at the cost of trust, commitment and reciprocity.     

Two post-war paths: popular violence in the Bohemian lands and in Austria in the aftermath of World War I

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again.     

Transformation of bureaucratic states in eastern europe: public expenditure lessons from latin America

Creation of functioning public administration systems in Eastern Europe is made difficult by the need to tear down the centralized, state-owned economy of the past 45 years, deal with existing fiscal and security crises, and build new administrative systems and analytic capabilities. This paper suggests that the core of such an effort should be a focus on public expenditure management improvements through innovative training and technical assistance. In Latin America, too often aid was focused on supplying information technology without attempts to overcome obvious constraints to demand for its use. Comparative analysis of public administration systems in both regions reveals the same problems of (1) overcentralization of management and intergovernmental relations which destroys decision-making legitimacy, and (2) legalistic and compliance-oriented administrative systems which destroys incentives to manage effectively. To avoid these problems in Eastern Europe, technical assistance should stress incentives for decentralized management, and more flexible fiscal controls at the center.     

Globalising the Zapatistas: from Third World solidarity to global solidarity?

The 1994 Zapatista uprising in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas found extraordinary resonance beyond Mexico's borders and generated a range of transnational solidarity efforts. The Zapatistas retain many emancipatory ideals of earlier progressive groups, but formulate their social critique in a manner that is more democratic and global than that of most groups during the Cold War. As a consequence, their interpretation of contemporary social and political problems does not build on the distinction between first, second and third worlds so common in earlier decades. This is evident in the way solidarity is understood by the Zapatistas and transnational activists. The solidarity relationship between the Zapatistas and transnational activists is highly globalised and based on mutuality. In contrast, solidarity relationships in the cold war period, including Third World solidarity, had more of a one-way character in which there was a clear distinction between providers and beneficiaries of solidarity.     

State crimes against democracy in the war on terror: applying the Nuremberg principles to the Bush–Cheney Administration

This article asks whether, in waging war in the Middle East, the Bush–Cheney Administration developed and executed a conspiracy comparable to the one for which Nazi leaders were tried, convicted, and executed at Nuremberg after World War II. To meet the Nuremberg standards, such a conspiracy must include efforts to subvert the constitutional order. Today, scholars refer to these actions as ‘state crimes against democracy’ (SCADs). After explicating the Nuremberg standards, the article applies them to the Bush–Cheney Administration's ‘war on terror’. The conclusion reached is that evidence of a SCAD-driven conspiracy is extensive and certainly adequate by the Nuremberg standards to warrant investigations and trials.     

Cold War redux in US–Russia relations? The effects of US media framing and public opinion of the 2008 Russia–Georgia war

This paper examines the Cold War rhetoric in US–Russia relations by looking at the 2008 Russia–Georgia war as a major breaking point. We investigate the links between media, public opinion and foreign policy. In our content analysis of the coverage in two major US newspapers, we find that the framing of the conflict was anti-Russia, especially in the initial stages of the conflict. In addition, our survey results demonstrate that an increase in the media exposure of US respondents increased the likelihood of blaming Russia exclusively in the conflict. This case study helps us understand how media can be powerful in constructing a certain narrative of an international conflict, which can then affect public perceptions of other countries. We believe that the negative framing of Russia in the US media has had important implications for the already-tenuous relations between the US and Russia by reviving and perpetuating the Cold War mentality for the public as well as for foreign policymakers.     

Think Local

Terrorism is the wrong term. War is the wrong metaphor. Iraq is the wrong war. That pretty much sums up how the fight against the Islamist jihadists who targeted America has gone awry in the five years since September 11, 2001 — a similar period of time in which the United States had mobilized from virtual scratch and defeated Germany and Japan in World War II.     

The Russia-NATO mistrust: Ethnophobia and the double expansion to contain “the Russian Bear”

This paper argues that Russian-Western mistrust persists due to historical and cultural developments with roots in the Cold War. The post-Cold War imbalance of power served to exacerbate the problem. The United States emerged as the world's superpower acting on perceived fears of Russia, whereas Russia's undermined capabilities dictated a defensive, rather than a hegemonic response. The paper analyzes the decision to expand NATO by excluding Russia from the process. It also asks why the process suddenly stopped in 2008. What changed the West's mind about the expansion was not a revised perception of Russia, but rather concern with its growing power and assertiveness as revealed by the Kremlin's use of force during the Caucasus' war.