A history of drones: moral(e) bombing and state terrorism

This article argues that an historical investigation of air power makes possible the critique of current regimes of drone surveillance and bombing as a practice of state terrorism. By identifying certain key themes regularly used in terrorism studies for the classification of violence as “terrorism”, this article shows that early air power theorists understood military aircraft as essentially instruments of terrorism. A central argument permeating these theorists’ conception of air power was that the military value of aviation lay in its capacity to target the enemy’s population and, by means of bombing, generate a significant “moral effect” – that is, a psychological effect against the morale of civilians. This strategic formula constituted a central component of British air control schemes during the interwar period, where terror bombing was deployed systematically in order to control and pacify colonial populations. In arguing that widespread and long-lasting terror remains an inalienable feature of air power, this article concludes with a call for a critique that accounts for the fact that current deployments of armed drones – for instance, the US “targeted killings” programme – effectively reproduce these historical and material conditions of terrorist violence.     

Uneven space of everyday modernity: the colonial logic of the suburb in Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love

Tanizaki Jun'ichiro's A Fool's Love (1924–1925) has been widely studied as a representative text of the modern popular culture of the Taisho period. This article treats the work as a key text that reveals the colonial relations embedded in everyday modernity of Japan's interwar years, and examines the articulations of colonial relations in three registers of the text. It first investigates the protagonists' unrestrained embrace of cosmopolitan culture as a manifestation of Japan's ambiguous imperialist consciousness, shaped in the interstices between Western and Asian others. The second and third registers concern a particular kind of space dominant in the story: the modern suburb, which became a major symbol of Japan's modernity in the 1920s. In its subordinate relationship with the city, the suburb exemplifies colonial relations. The second register explored in the article is the overlap between the text's exoticism and suburban topography. A key scene on a resort beach is examined for its reference to Hawai'i and the setting's suburban nature in relation to Tokyo. The last register is the suppression of the story's suburban setting. The article analyzes the disappearance as a manifestation of the anxiety about the unevenness of capitalist development that the suburb represents.     

European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity?

The European Union has, since 1999, moved deliberately, if slowly, to develop the capability to undertake autonomously a range of demanding political military operations beyond Europe's borders. This effort, the European Security and Defense Policy (esdp), is a puzzle insofar as post-Cold War Europe is very secure, and most European nations are members of an established alliance, the u.s.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. esdp is best explained by the international relations theory known as structural realism, the modern guise of balance of power theory. Balance of power theory is contrasted with balance of threat theory. Though European states are not motivated by a perception of an imminent threat from the United States, they are balancing u.s. power. The concentration of global power in the United States, unipolarity, is uncomfortable even for its friends who fear the abandonment that u.s. freedom of action permits and who wish to influence the global political environment the United States could create.     

Has-Been,Wannabe, or Leader: Europe’s Role in the World After the 2003 European Security Strategy

In December 2003, the European Union presented its “security strategy”, endorsed by all member states, to provide guidance for Europe’s common foreign security and defense policy. In substance, this document is not an expression of a growing strategic rift between Europe and the United States. One of the purposes it serves, however, is defining Europe’s own, separate “identity”. It reflects the increasing awareness that Europeans need to employ their power more effectively in the service of international peace and security, as much as politically possible. Disagreements on key issues remain in Europe, however, and the practical implications of the security strategy still need to be worked out.     

The European ‘Other’ in Poland’s Conservative Identity Project

Since taking office in November 2015, Poland’s conservative government has pressed for a sweeping reinterpretation of the past, and a re-envisioning of the future, of the political community. This conservative identity project idealises the allegedly fully sovereign Poland of the interwar period and repudiates the normative commitments underpinning Poland’s accession to the European Union. The worldview of the conservative government’s liberal critics, by contrast, represents a fusion of the inclusive nationalism asserted in opposition to communist rule with the affirmation of a European identity. The reawakening of historically resonant debates about the nature of Poland’s European-ness, emphasizing the centrality of the (Western) European ‘other’ in Poland’s national idea, carries significant implications for its relations within the international environment.     

Powerless and Frustrated: Britain's Relationship With China During the Opening Years of the Second Sino–Japanese War, 1937–1939

Foreign policy is multi-faceted. It was not only diplomatic, political, socio-cultural, economic, Imperial, and strategic factors that structured—and limited—Britain's foreign policy during the interwar period; so, too, did those of other countries. Given the number and variety of Britain's—and the interconnected other Powers'—interests in China, Britain's relationship with China during the opening years of the Second Sino–Japanese War provides a useful insight which has wider implications on Britain's road to war narrative. Given the topic's neglect, one can be forgiven for inferring that events in Europe entirely eclipsed those of East Asia. This article demonstrates the contrary. As awareness of Chinese suffering spread and as Japanese aggrandisement threatened British interests, sinophilism became vogue once again. However, the often insurmountable obstacles that the interwar period presented to Britain and others—particularly the United States—limited Britain's ability to aid China. It was not for want of fortitude.     

EU power and armed humanitarianism in Africa: evaluating ESDP in Chad

This article analyses the European Union's (EU's) largest European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) military mission outside Europe to date; Eufor Tchad/RCA was a 3700-strong force involving personnel from 23 states, deployed to Chad and the Central African Republic for 12 months from March 2008. Far from this mission achieving EU ‘supremacy’ or projecting an ‘imperial’ reach, an evaluation of its objectives and achievements reveals acute limitations in the EU's ability to project power. The article analyses the context in which Eufor was conceived and deployed. It notes that the mission's weaknesses, like those of the United Nations mission to whom the EU transferred its security role in 2009, reflected its convoluted origins and objectives. Finally, the article examines whether the EU as a unitary actor has the desire or the ability to ‘replace’ individual European nations—in this case France—in their post-colonial military and ‘humanitarian’ roles in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Europe＇s Integration Process is Floundering

The post-WWII situation in Europe is closely related to Europe＇s integration process. Right now, one of the special features regarding the current European situation is that Europe＇s integration process has nearly become enmeshed in stagnation. The European Union is disintegrating, with various kinds of contradictions cropping up and its cohesion sharply reduced. The EU rotating chair-state Hungarian premier said, ＂Europe is like a bicycle without a chain, unable to move forward.＂     

‘Bringing Geopolitics Back In’: Exploring the Security Dimension of the 2004 Eastern Enlargement of the European Union

Notwithstanding the functional and technocratic basis of the European integration process, and the fact that the accession criteria hardly mentions security issues, the 2004 eastern enlargement brought to the forefront of EU politics important geopolitical and security issues. Eastern enlargement came on to the agenda of the EU in the wake of 1989's peaceful revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Security and geopolitics mattered to the decision taken by the EU to embark on expansion in the early 1990s, and thereafter security issues remained prominent in enlargement debates. This article seeks to analyse the most important geopolitical issues that eastern enlargement has brought to the fore. In exploring the geopolitical dimension of the eastern enlargement process, the article foregrounds some key issues including: the potential power realignments in Europe triggered by enlargement, the EU's relationship with Russia and its importance to the unfolding of the enlargement process, and how eastern enlargement was conceived as a mechanism for stabilising the EU's external environment. The article contrasts realist and constructivist images of post-1989 Europe and the eastern enlargement process and assesses their contribution to enlargement scholarship. It argues that constructivist imagery best explains the way in which EU actors interpreted key geopolitical issues within the enlargement framework. In particular, it presents enlargement as the expansion of the existing European security community, wherein geopolitical issues were subject to a process of securitisation and desecuritisation.     

Italy and the new international economic order

In order to make it more effective as an actor on the international scene, the European Union is being urged to reverse its foreign policy priorities. EU enlargement policy has fallen out of grace and many want to see Europe acquire a “normal” foreign policy with a global rather than merely regional reach, significant military means and centralised governance. Management of various conflicts in Africa and Asia is also in vogue. Such a policy shift will define the nature of Europe's actorness. It is argued that, with all its defects, the EU performs quite well as a civilian regional power and efforts to transform it into a traditional military power with a global reach could make things worse rather than better.     

The relativity of decline: a reappraisal of French leadership and influence in a time of global crisis

This article is an attempt, in the context of the Eurozone crisis that has shaken Europe since 2008, to explore and deconstruct two pieces of conventional wisdom on French leadership in Europe and the world. The stereotypical image of a country in decline and denial, out of touch with today’s globalised world, is reproduced so often in the Anglo-American media and even in scholarly discourse, that is has become a self-evident truism. The article examines this truism in two different perspectives: there is, on the one hand, the axiom that France has lost influence in Europe and that the balance of power has shifted inexorably to Germany and, on the other hand, the axiom that Europe does not matter in the global ‘power shift’ and that, as part of Europe, France does not count any more either. In questioning the origins and validity of these axioms, the authors argue that a strong perception bias persists and is constantly perpetuated even though reality has changed. Not only has France rather successfully adapted to globalisation in both political and economic terms, but it has also found new ways and discourses about its role as Germany’s partner in leadership in the European Union. The paper goes on to show that both France and the EU retain and use significant levers for action in three dimensions of power—coercion, agenda-setting and attraction. It concludes that going into 2012, France remains an active and important actor, both in the EU and on the global scene. It is present and influential in major international institutions, effectively builds international coalitions and floats important ideas on reforming laissez-faire capitalism.     

论西班牙天主教在菲律宾传播的历史背景

对大多数殖民地国家而言,15世纪末以来,基督教是伴随着西方殖民主义者的隆隆炮声而来的。基督教在近代欧洲的海外扩张中充当了侵略工具,它的海外扩张是近代欧洲海外扩张的产物。本文以辨证唯物主义为指导,探讨了近代基督教传播的二重性,并在基督教东扩史和欧洲扩张史背景下来探讨了西班牙天主教在东方的传播。     

Asian perceptions about the EU in the Asia�CEurope Meeting (ASEM)

The inauguration of the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Bangkok in March 1996 has created enthusiasm and hopes for closer inter-regional relations between Asia and Europe. This article observes how behaviors of European countries representatives in the ASEM process have significantly shaped the perceptions of Asian officials and people about the EU and European intentions to develop mutually beneficial relations with Asia. It employs a constructivist framework in which the ASEM process is treated as a dynamic social setting for not only Asia–Europe inter-regional interactions but also intra-Asia socialization. Methodologically, it is a qualitative research with an inductive process and interpretive method. The research uses qualitative data, gathered from various sources and 82 in-depth interviews with diplomats, scholars, journalists, business peoples and civil society representatives in five Asian countries. This study finds that some behaviors of EU participants at ASEM or ASEF interregional forums are counterproductive for EU efforts to develop robust relations with Asian countries. The polarization between Asian and European groups in the ASEM or ASEF meetings, caused by political issues and colonial memory, contributed to the difficulties in trust-building between Asian and European participants. In addition, by their frequent absence from ASEM Summits, EU leaders squandered rare opportunities for a ‘meeting of minds and hearts’ with their Asian counterparts. This process seems to be a precondition for Asians to develop tangible cooperation.     

欧洲债务危机的根源及前景

一年多来,欧洲债务危机一直是国际上谈论的焦点之一。美国出于转移世人对美国经济低迷、债务沉重的关注和原本对欧元影响美元霸主地位的不满,也在竭力指摘欧债危机拖累美国经济。欧债危机原本是二战后欧洲国家长期实行“高工资、高福利”政策导致经济发展迟滞的结果,当前不可能有“立竿见影”的解决办法。然而,当今的欧盟,作为世界第一大经济体,虽经受金融危机的冲击,经济实力并未大为削弱,只要从实际出发,开源节流,着眼长远,欧元区就不会解体,欧洲一体化必将会以“多速欧洲”推进。     

Austria and European integration, 1947–60: Western orientation,neutrality and free trade

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Austria's role in the early days of European integration. This includes the attempt to find a European solution to the South Tyrol problem and the first steps towards the economy's Western orientation, that is, Austria's participation in the Marshall Plan, its OEEC and EPU memberships as well as its relationship with the Council of Europe and the ECSC. International relations determined Austria's room for manoeuvre in its efforts to obtain independence. This excluded EEC membership. The Ballhausplatz was thus striving for a European Free Trade Area. The role of the political parties are also covered in this paper. A further objective is to examine Austria's integration policy and the contrasts between the situation in Austria and West Germany. The paper points out how this small European state tried to avoid its exclusion from the European integration process and how it applied various methods to approach and cooperate with European institutions.     

The Balkans and Euro-Atlantic Energy Security

Europe’s current energy crisis underscores its failure to deal adequately with the problems posed by increasing dependence one Russian gas. Particularly in the Balkans Russia’s oligopolistic position if not monopoly in some countries adds to its leverage upon them, stimulates corruption and state capture, and in general inhibits the European integration project. Nevertheless, there are opportunities to bring more gas into the Balkans and through them to Central Europe to reduce Russia’s hegemonic position in the gas market and reverse the trend towards illiberalism and poor governance that marks the region. Albania’s example and the connections to its neighbors that flow form its EU-approved plan illustrate what should be done and how such programs would improve energy and governance, if not security, in the Balkans and Europe as a whole.     

British Policy and the Ruhr Crisis 1922–24

This article provides an overview of British policy during a defining episode in the interwar period — the Ruhr crisis of 1923–4. The author assesses the external considerations influencing Britain's policy (especially the roles of France, Germany, and the United States), and also explores the processes of foreign policy making within Britain's complex bureaucratic system. In particular, the relationship between the Foreign Office and the Treasury is analyzed and its impact on European policy assessed. The article challenges traditional views of British policy at this time, concluding that it was far more complex, but also far more limited and constrained, than previous studies would suggest.     

早期葡萄牙在远东殖民扩张中的天主教因素

近代早期的葡萄牙既是信奉天主教的旧教国,也是最早向海外扩张的欧洲殖民国家。葡萄牙的宗教狂热决定了其在殖民活动中不可避免地受到了天主教的影响。本文以近代早期葡萄牙在东亚海域的殖民扩张为背景,从几个方面探讨了天主教的影响。