National versus Communal Memory in Lebanon

Abstract

The aim of this article is to distinguish between two levels of collective memory in Lebanon: the national memory, which is a very weak and fragile memory, and the communal memory of sectarian groups. Each community in Lebanon enjoys a memory of its own, which it tries to elevate to the national memory, but at the same time intra-sectarian groups contest their internal memories with others. Hence, we see that communities try to force the state to adopt their respective memories, while internally groups tend to eliminate their competitor’s memory and communal narrative.     

有限战争理论与以色列在黎巴嫩的军事行动

有限战争在战略目标、战略手段、打击对象和打击范围的选择方面受主观克制和客观限制的双重影响。有限战争是安全战略的重要选项,其能否上升为决策者的首选,主要取决于以下5个因素,即外来威胁的强度、国内支持度、盟友支持度、国际舆论支持度和敌我力量对比悬殊程度。这些因素同样是2006年7月起以色列对黎巴嫩真主党游击队发动有限战争的内在逻辑。     

2006年黎巴嫩战争和中东局势新发展

2006年7月爆发的黎巴嫩战争,是美以蓄谋已久、由以色列发动、以色列投入最大规模兵力、以色列建国以来经历激战时间最长的战争。其根源在于美国布什政府的全球战略目标和美国"大中东战略"。这场战争反映出中东更加错综复杂的矛盾。黎巴嫩战争连同伊拉克战争已经并将进一步对中东局势发展产生深刻的影响,同时促使世界多极化进一步发展。当前,美国面临的种种矛盾异常突出,难以阻遏其不断衰败的趋势。人们在看到当今世界总体发展趋势的同时,也应充分估计到发展过程中的严峻挑战,必将经历尖锐反复斗争、激烈分化组合与曲折起伏的较长期的过程。     

The Social Construction of Identity: Israeli Foreign Policy and the 2006 War in Lebanon

This article uses a constructivist analysis to consider the social construction of identity and the Israeli military action in Lebanon in 2006. Strands of meaning, constructive of a collective sense of self, emerged out of historical continuities, interacted and were made meaningful in relation to each other around the issue of the Hezbollah threat in 2006. They framed, contextualised and constituted that policy issue to form a situated and contingent identity of the possible, within which the policy decisions that produced the second Lebanon War were taken. Whilst a body of work has resulted from engagement with this conflict, and a well established literature discusses Israeli identity, little has been done to bring the two together and consider in detail the role of identity in constructing the 2006 war as possible and desirable for Israel. This is the focus and contribution of this article. Domestically, the institutional context of the 2006 Knesset elections revealed a national identity in which the multi-faceted vulnerability identity and Fighting Jew identity were salient, interacting strands. The narratives of ordeal, existential threat, and self-reliance acted to increase the power of the Fighting Jew identity, predicated on a faith in military solutions to threats. These ideas came up against and were rearticulated in the context of the global “War on Terror” to make the war in 2006 both possible and desirable.     

Psyoping Hezbollah: The Israeli Psychological Warfare Campaign During the 2006 Lebanon War

The 2006 War between Israel and Hezbollah had a significant component of PSYOP. For the first time in its military history Israel deployed PSYOP as an inseparable part of its military operations. The performance of the PSYOP unit was less than satisfactory due to organizational factors and the general conduct of the war itself. This article analyzes the goals, the themes, and the delivery channels used throughout the PSYOP campaign. An attempt is made to answer the key question of whether this effort was effective.     

The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi–Tech and Infrastructural Violence

This article examines how humanitarian laws of war have been recast in light of a new generation of hi–tech weapons and innovations in strategic theory. Far from falling into disuse, humanitarian law is invoked more frequently than ever to confer legitimacy on military action. New legal interpretations, diminished ad bellum rules, and an expansive view of military necessity are coalescing in a regime of legal warfare that licenses hi–tech states to launch wars as long as their conduct is deemed just. The ascendance of technical legalism has undercut customary restraints on the use of armed force and has opened a legal chasm between technological haves and have–nots. Most striking is the use of legal language to justify the erosion of distinctions between soldiers and civilians and to legitimize collateral damage. Hi–tech warfare has dramatically curbed immediate civilian casualties, yet the law sanctions infrastructural campaigns that harm long–term public health and human rights in ways that are now clear.     

Intraethnic Dominance and Control: Violence Against Co-Ethnics in the Early Sri Lankan Civil War

In some ethno-separatist wars, rebel groups direct a large share of violence against members of their own ethnic community. But why do rebels target the co-ethnics they claim to represent in the war against the government? Our aim in this paper is to provide the components for a conceptual framework that we assess using unique disaggregated casualty data on violence committed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam against co-ethnic Tamils in territories claimed for the Tamil Eelam state in the early phase of the Sri Lankan conflict, 1985–88. We propose that there are two distinct processes of intraethnic violence: violence against co-ethnic civilians and violence against co-ethnic rivals. While the former aims at controlling the population to win the war against the government, the latter aims at establishing leadership dominance over the ethnic minority. We examine the role of ethnic homogeneity in shaping the use of violence directed against the two types of co-ethnic targets in the buildup phase of ethno-separatist war. We conclude that ethnic demographic structures matter for how the rebels treat co-ethnics in the early phase of war before they have established territorial control.     

Aftershocks: Postwar Leadership Survival, Rivalry, and Regime Dynamics

Under what conditions are leaders replaced after a war? Past research has reported that the outcome of the war and regime type affect postwar leadership tenure. Yet, this does not exhaust the conditions that could potentially influence political survival. In this article, I reexamine the links between regime type and leadership replacement after a war. I show that past research has failed to account for the dynamics of political leadership, and in the process has misrepresented the evidence supporting previous theories. I then show, using event history techniques, that both internal and external factors can alter leadership trajectories after a war. Specifically, war outcomes significantly affect the job security of a leader outside of international rivalry, but have less of an effect within rivalry. Additionally, relaxing various assumptions concerning the relationship between leadership survival and regime type leads to a richer understanding of the process of postwar leadership turnover. Finally, several propositions concerning the interaction between regime type and the costs of war are not supported in this analysis.     

Nonviolent Interference in Civic Life During Civil War: Rebel Service Provision and Postwar Norms of Interpersonal Trustworthiness in Sri Lanka

While previous studies focus most of their attention on the impact of civil-war violence on postwar norms of interpersonal trustworthiness, they overlook the importance of political actors' nonviolent interference in civic life during such conflicts. This paper investigates the relationship between wartime provision of public services and postwar trustworthiness norms among civilians. Using original survey data collected from Sri Lanka, empirical analysis suggests that postwar norms of interpersonal trustworthiness tend to weaken if individuals experienced higher amounts of service provision by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. To build their own apparatus to provide efficient services, the rebels deeply intervened in and altered local institutions. Such transformation of local institutions dissolves existing social groups and associations that previously tied residents together. Efforts of post-civil-war community development would be ill equipped if these institutions were treated as nonexistent. Postwar development programs need to provide new, effective local institutions to replace those established in wartime.     

Forms of Civil War Violence and Their Consequences for Future Public Health

Previous research concerning the relationship between conflict and public health finds that countries emerging from war face greater challenges in ensuring the well-being of their populations in comparison with states that have enjoyed political stability. This study seeks to extend this insight by considering how different civil war conflict strategies influence post-conflict public health. Drawing a distinction between deaths attributable to battle and those fatalities resulting from genocide/politicide, we find that the magnitude of genocide/politicide proves the more effective and consistent predictor of future rates of disability and death in the aftermath of civil war. The implications of this research are twofold. First, it lends support to an emerging literature suggesting that important distinctions exist between the forms of violence occurring during civil war. Second, of particular interest to policymakers, it identifies post-civil war states that have experienced the highest rates of genocide/politicide as the countries most in need of assistance in the aftermath of conflict.     

The Dynamics of Mass Killings: Testing Time-Series Models of One-Sided Violence in the Bosnian Civil War

Many observers contend that wartime civilian victimization is an instrument of political leaders to achieve a particular goal. This article examines whether retaliation for similar acts by the other side, the developments on the battlefield, or the behavior of international actors accounts for the ups and downs of this so-called one-sided violence. Using information from the Konstanz One-Sided Violence Event Dataset and other sources, we evaluate the empirical relevance of these complementary models statistically. Time series analyses of the weekly number of killed and harmed Muslims (Bosniacs) and Serbs during the Bosnian civil war support the military and the massacre logic. We show that the Serbian side decreased one-sided violence following a territorial conquest, but that its one-sided violence was not a reciprocal response to the Bosniac targeting of civilians. Conversely, the Bosniac side resorted to violence during times of increasing Serbian atrocities and when the fighting was particularly intense. The analysis reveals that most international interventions did not reduce the carnage, but that the Serbs responded to Russian moves.