The Hollywood War Machine

What we call the "Hollywood War Machine" analyzes the production of films within the studio system depicting the glories of US military action within theaters from around the world, spanning the Revolutionary War period to the present. A large majority of films under discussion here can be understood from the perspective of "good wars" that the film industry has strongly favored, especially during the 1990s. This essay reveals an increasing emphasis on the World War II experience as the quintessential "good war" that brings American audiences back to the undistilled benevolence of the US military through its various patriotic and heroic exploits. The undoubtedly powerful impact of the September 11, 2001 events and their aftermath upon the Hollywood War Machine is a topic worthy of further discussion.     

A Critical Theory of the "Rationality" of US Foreign Policy: The Case of the American War in Vietnam

The attacks of September 11th, 2001, have increased the urgency of understanding the relationship between war-making and political culture. This essay uses Frankfurt School critical theory to analyze the development of the increasing "rationalization" of US foreign policy during the Cold War, focusing heuristically on the case of the US war in Vietnam. Particularly developing a Habermasian reading of these phenomena, the essay argues that, despite elite management and "steering" strategies, "subsystemic imperatives" are never completely "uncoupled" from the "cultural lifeworld." In the case of the US war in Vietnam, contradictions between elite political and economic instrumental rationalities and interests, and the broader American political culture and values, led to legitimation problems and loss of trust which have continued into the present period.     

Perfect Failure: the USA,Cuba and the Bay of Pigs, 1961

In 1961 the US Central Intelligence Agency master‐minded a sea‐borne invasion by Cuban exiles aimed at overthrowing the regime headed by Fidel Castro. With minimal logistical support from the USA the attempted counter‐coup launched at the Bay of Pigs was an unqualified disaster: a ‘perfect failure’, in the words of an authoritative contemporary. This essay locates the fiasco in the longer history of US–Cuban relations, concentrating on the Cold War years, the history of US political intervention and subversion in Latin America, and the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and the rise of Castro himself—both men offering different models of Latin American caudillismo (the power and cult of military strongmen). The essay concludes with an analysis of Cuba as an issue in US domestic politics and the impact of the Bay of Pigs in consolidating the Cuban revolution and setting the framework for the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.     

Against Humanitarian Impunity: Rethinking Responsibility for Displacement and Disaster in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Given that humanitarian organizations can often be responsible for enabling, prolonging or intensifying violence and conflict through their interventions into war zones, it is important that these organizations, despite their presumed neutrality and beneficence, be held accountable for the deleterious consequences of their actions. The case of northern Uganda will be used to demonstrate how humanitarian agencies have made possible the government's counterinsurgency, including its policy of mass forced displacement and internment, which has led to a vast humanitarian crisis. The Ugandan government policy will be assessed as a war crime, making aid agencies accessories to this crime. This case study is used as an example to highlight that processes which demand the post-conflict accountability of those responsible for violence may be dramatically incomplete, and unjust, if they do not include the humanitarian agencies. In conclusion it will be suggested that if humanitarian organizations built popular accountability mechanisms into their daily operations this might prevent them from being complicit with egregious violence in the first place.     

Exposing the War on Women: The Limits of Law and Power of Care to Address Sexual Violence in Contemporary Crime Drama

A comparative reading of two recent crime dramas, The Fall (TF) and The Bletchley Circle (BC), demonstrates the limits of law and potential of care to address violence against women. TF, a Nordic noir, moves beyond a gender-blind account of crime yet relies on a liberal, state-centric response that blunts its political critique. BC, a hybrid cozy-period-detective genre piece set in post-World War II London, offers a new perspective on violence against women in crime dramas. First, juxtaposing men’s and women’s post-war experiences, BC frames violence against women as an ongoing war in which women remain comrades-in-arms. Second, it suggests that while the state has a necessary role to play as a coordinator of spaces, skills, and citizens, state action alone cannot end violence against women. Rather, citizen engagement through an ethic of care may offer a new way to address such harms.     

The Tragedy of Liberal Diplomacy: Democratization,Intervention, Statebuilding (Part I)

Since the end of the Cold War, democracy promotion, intervention and statebuilding have once again been explicit features of American foreign policy. Current assessments of this return, however, overlook both their longer term history and their roots in liberal (and not just American) ideology. The contradictions and dynamics entailed in the liberal philosophy of history have already played themselves out once before, in the modernization theories and policies of the early Cold War period. Despite their academic and political failures at the time, the same assumptions now underpin democracy promotion in the post-Cold War period and show signs of the same dynamics of failure. In this two part essay, I argue that the repetition of such counterproductive policies constitutes a recurring ‘tragedy of liberal diplomacy’ in which the shaping of US foreign policy by assumptions deeply rooted in the liberal philosophy of history plays a central part in producing the very enemies that policy is designed to confront and transform.     

Hungnam and the Japanese atomic bomb: Recent historiography of a postwar Myth

Since 1946, journalists in the US have alleged that Japanese scientists successfully built and tested an atomic bomb hear the city of Hungnam, Korea, during the closing days of World War II. Based upon reports from US military intelligence investigations conducted after the war, as well as from Japanese corporate histories and memoirs, the present essay attempts to dispel the myth of Japans atomic bomb by providing a detailed examination of the events that occurred in Hungnam in the final days of the war. Reasons for the endurance of the myth in the historiography of modern Japan are also considered.     

Can there be Costless War? Violent Exposures and (In)Vulnerable Selves in Benjamin Percy's "Refresh,Refresh"

Abstract

The technological transformation of the conduct of war, exemplified by the American employment of drones in Afghanistan and in Iraq, calls for a critical reflection about the fantasies that underpin, and are in turn animated by, the robotic revolution of the military. At play here is a fantasy of a "costless war" or a "sterile war", that is such act of military state violence against the other that is inconsequential for the self. In other words, the seductive appeal of the "costless war" fantasy rests on the desire to develop a self that is invulnerable in the face of violence. Importantly, it is a desire explicitly projected towards a particular American future (of an imagined warfare, or of a super-power status), but also one that is connected to a lacking critical reflection about the intersubjective aspects of violence in the debates about America's post-9/11 military involvements. This article reflects critically about the fantasy of the "costless war" and about its underpinning politics of invulnerability from a perhaps unlikely angle of literature. In a close reading of a short story by Benjamin Percy called "Refresh, Refresh" (2008), it explores its narrative insights into how acts of violence, which are undertaken far from home, inevitably return to affect and damage, perhaps beyond repair, the subject at home. Importantly, the return of violence in Percy's story occurs within the domain of the everyday and the mundane, not of the exceptional, and testifies to the despair experienced by young males "abandoned' by their military fathers. My interpretation draws also on theoretical explorations of the connection between violence, intersubjectivity and vulnerability, based on the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas on the subject's ethical captivity by the suffering of the other, and on Judith Butler's recent "uses" of the Levinasian ethical project in her writing about the post-9/11 America.     

Governing peacekeeping: the role of authority and expertise in the case of sexual violence and trauma

Abstract

The surprising authority of gender expertise on sexual violence within post-Cold War peacekeeping can be understood by tracing how sexual violence became linked with political torture and combat violence in peacekeeping security rationality. The linkage emerged from the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) theory within anti-Vietnam war activism, which gained international authority during the 1980s. Post-Cold War narratives of ‘multi-dimensional’ peacekeeping as the policing and rehabilitation of perpetrators and victims for self-government drew on PTSD expertise on ‘integrity violations’, thus problematizing sexual violence. However, gender expertise should not be dismissed as providing ideological cover for imperialist projects: the contingent authority gender expertise has claimed has disrupted the peacekeeping narrative by representing peacekeeping operations as fostering flourishing sex industries in which integrity violations are a norm.     

Postmodern War in the Age of Bush II

This study charts the genealogy and development of new trends in high-tech warfare that have emerged in the past decade, focusing on both the challenges and dangers. Attention is devoted to the Bush administration's military program and foreign policy moves, highlighting the ways Bush II intensifies the dangers of high-tech war while undermining efforts at collective security, environmental protection, and global peace. The argument here is that the volatile mixture of highly regressive, unilateralist, and militarist tendencies combined with high-tech weapons provides a clear and present danger of a protracted and frightening period of war. This mixture dramatically erupted in Bush's military response to the terrorist attacks of September 11 and is currently intensifying dangers to world peace in the campaign some are labeling "World War III."     

Creative appropriation: academic knowledge and interventions against sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo

ABSTRACT

Recent academic research has questioned assumptions about sexual violence in (post-) conflict contexts. Gender norms rather than military decision-making have been found to constitute a major underlying reason for wartime sexual violence. In this contribution, we investigate whether international organisations seeking to prevent sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo have accordingly changed their analytical perspectives and modified policies and programming. We find that many, but not all, such organisations creatively appropriate new academic work in their policy and project documents. However, incentives for continuity in the humanitarian field have slackened the pace of any substantive practical changes.     

Civilian victimization and international military intervention in civil wars

Civil wars are particularly destructive and asymmetric in nature. As a result, humanitarian crises and episodes of one-sided violence against civilians are likely to emerge. In the post-Cold War era, human rights norms have been strengthened by a global commitment stating that nations have a responsibility to protect people against war crimes. Although the doctrine does not require military responses, as episodes of one-sided violence increase dramatically in the midst of civil conflict, we would expect those cases to experience relatively swift foreign response, including military intervention; a growing trend of at least purportedly humanitarian interventions should be observable. Expectations relating to the responsibility to protect are tested on all civil conflicts occurring between 1989 and 2006. Findings indicate that there is little evidence that one-sided violence leads to military intervention, suggesting that the internationally community does not use its most powerful tool to protect civilians in trouble.     

State Violence and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (lgbt) Rights

Most societies, and the governments that represent them, regard lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) people to be immoral, decadent, and a threat to public order. Throughout the world, this homophobia long has caused lgbt people to be subject to ''legal'' violence made up of discriminatory laws and practices by state agencies, ''semi-legal'' violence of killing, torture, and harassment by police forces, and extra-judicial violence by individuals and groups in society. Yet as an unprecedented number of countries democratize, they adopt constitutions that prohibit and prosecute such practices. At the same time, rapidly growing lgbt organizations are using newfound freedoms to demand an end to abuse. Most of these democracies have proven unwilling or unable to enforce legal protections, however, while the economic and political uncertainties accompanying democratization often incite further violence. After examining the forms and patterns of anti-lgbt violence, this paper will analyze why democratic transitions have not led to its elimination.     

The politics of genocide scholarship: the case of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

The massive communal violence that occurred in East Pakistan in 1971 received worldwide attention at the time, but has been largely ignored since. Some scholars and other writers have denied that what took place in Bangladesh was a genocide. Journalists’ reports, expatriate testimony, refugee reports and an investigation by the International Commission of Jurists in 1972 all indicate, however, that the Pakistani army did commit genocide in Bangladesh in 1971. The political and ideological circumstances that led to the secession of East Pakistan were conducive to religious and ethnic genocide. Beachler examines the treatment by memoirists and scholars of the 1971 crisis in East Pakistan and seeks to explain the reasons why the genocide in Bangladesh has been largely ignored since the early 1970s. No ideological or partisan faction in the United States has stood to gain much from the study of the Bangladesh genocide. And the governments of Bangladesh and Pakistan have not been interested in promoting study of the mass murder and rapes that took place in 1971.     

Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?

Abstract

This essay argues that the new global regime of R2P bifurcates the international system between sovereign states whose citizens have political rights, and de facto trusteeship territories whose populations are seen as wards in need of external protection. Under the direction of the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court has become an integral part of the international R2P regime by allowing for the legal normalization of certain types of violence (such as Western counterinsurgency efforts), while arbitrarily criminalizing the violence of other states as ‘genocide’. In place of this unequal global regime, the essay concludes by arguing for an internally-driven process of political reform and legal reconciliation, as pioneered in South Africa.     

An NPD encyclopaedia

Henry Stimson, American Secretary of War during the Second World War, though not a rabid antisemite, strenuously opposed allowing Jewish war refugees into the US and objected strongly to American recognition of the Jewish right to a state in Palestine.     

Japanese policy and the North Korean ‘soft landing’

Abstract

The nature of security on the Korean Peninsula has undergone fundamental change in the post‐Cold War period, characterized by the growing recognition on the part of the major regional powers that there is a need for economic as well as military approaches to security and conflict avoidance. The chief manifestation of this trend is the emergence of the US Department of State's ‘soft landing’ and other engagement policies as attempts to resolve North Korean security threats. Some commentators have seen the soft‐landing policy as an opportunity for Japan to use its economic power to contribute to regional and international security. This article examines the evolution and rationale of the soft‐landing policy, how Japanese policy‐makers evaluate its potential as a solution to the North Korean security problem and the current extent of Japan's contribution to it. The article also points out the‐limitations of Japanese support for the soft landing due to international restrictions on the Japanese government's room for diplomatic manoeuvre, domestic political obstacles to engaging North Korea and the general lack of Japanese private business interest in the North. Finally the conclusion shows that, despite the recognition of the need to engage North Korea economically, Japanese policy‐makers have devoted their energies principally to the redefinition of the US‐Japan military alliance based on the legitimacy of the North Korean threat.     

Statebuilding and Force: The Proper Role of Foreign Militaries

Abstract

Recent military interventions, both peace operations authorized by the United Nations and actions by individual countries, have aimed at helping build new or reconstituted states. The legitimacy and success of these state-building interventions are often contested by local actors. Yet state-like structures are needed to ensure the rule of law and economic growth. This paper argues for a new approach: to direct the use of foreign force toward roles that helped states emerge as the most successful governance structures in historical Europe, by defending populations from outside attack, protecting them from banditry and violence, and enforcing predictable rules for commerce and civil life (while training local forces to assume these duties). This approach focuses attention on the practical need to prepare military forces for both traditional defence and police-like roles.     

Consolidating authoritarian rule: calibrated coercion in Singapore

Abstract

Despite the persistence of authoritarian forms of rule, studies of state domination have seen little need to analyse the use of force against citizens. This essay argues that, while state violence is elemental, it is not straightforward. States have a range of repressive tools at their disposal, which they need to deploy rationally and with finesse if they are to consolidate their authoritarian systems. As a step towards problematizing state violence, this essay suggests the concept of calibrated coercion, which represses challengers with minimum political cost. Calibrated coercion is illustrated through an in-depth case study of press controls in Singapore, where one of the world's most successful hegemonic parties has governed continuously for four decades. Behind the stability of the press system, the Singapore government has made fundamental changes to its modes of control, with less frequent recourse to blunter instruments such as newspaper closures or arbitrary arrest. Instead, less visible instruments are increasingly used, with the media's commercial foundations turned against themselves.     

Europe,the Final Solution and the dynamics of intent

ABSTRACT

The scale and scope of the ‘final solution’ of the ‘Jewish question’ were extreme even in the horrific annals of genocide. Bloxham attempts to shed light on the pattern of mass murder in its expansion and contraction by viewing the Holocaust in a set of temporally and culturally specific contexts. It places the Holocaust into a broader European framework of violent ethnopolitics and geopolitics from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. The Holocaust is depicted as an only partially discrete part of a continental process of traumatic flux, and a part, furthermore, that can itself be partially disaggregated into national and regional components. Bloxham moves from a general consideration of patterns of ethnic violence in the period to a closer causal explanation that shows the different valences of Nazi policy towards Jews in the lands directly ruled by Germany and those of Germany's allies respectively. He shows that the peculiarly extensive ambitions of the ‘final solution’ at its most expansive can only be explained when wider geopolitical and strategic contextual terms are factored in along with consideration of Nazi ideology and the internal dynamics of some of the key institutions of the perpetrator state.