Nakasone Yasuhiro Peace Institute—Looking Back Over Our Past and Looking Ahead to Our Future—

The Institute for International Policy Studies (IIPS), an independent, non-profit research institute founded in 1998 by former prime minister of Japan Yasuhiro Nakasone, has pursued an ambitious research program that covers the fields of international politics, economics, security, energy, and the environment for 30 years. The Institute also convenes international symposia and seminars on important political and economic issues and conducts joint projects with other research institutes in Japan and internationally. Research findings and policy proposals are published in print and on the website.

On the occasion of the 30^th anniversary of the Institute’s founding, and to commemorate the 99^th birthday of Founder and Chairman Yasuhiro Nakasone, as well as recognize the background and purpose of the research work and further clarify the mission for future research endeavors, as of January 1, 2018, the Institute has been renamed Nakasone Yasuhiro Peace Institute (NPI).     

Al-Wefaq and the February 14 uprising: Islam,nationalism and democracy – the Shici-Bahraini discourse

Al-Wefaq's complex nature led to ambiguity over the relationship between religion and politics and over the balance between Islamic ecumenism and sectarianism. While the Shi^ci uprising presented a national and democratic agenda, questions remain over the party's full commitment to democracy and its loyalty to the national framework in the current regional turmoil with the empowerment of Shi^cis and disintegration of nation-states. There could be a discrepancy between the declared aims of an oppositional movement and its actions once it assumes power. The problematic legacy of minority–majority relations in Bahrain, the country's political culture and the difficult example of post-2003 Iraq, are further barriers to advancing full democracy. If the Shi^ci majority gains power the party may become less democratic and more sectarian. Yet, it will also have much to lose given Bahrain's strategic alliance with the US and its position as a financial services hub in the region.     

THE RSAA MAP COLLECTION

In the century since its foundation, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs has amassed a collection of over 1,000 historic maps. This illustrated article by the Society's archivist provides an introduction to a number of the more important maps in the collection, including General Sam Browne's map indicating the invasion routes of Afghanistan in the Second Afghan War; rare maps of Turkey in the 19^th and early 20^th century; Egypt; the Arabian Peninsula; India; and Central Asia.     

11th international social justice conference, Berlin 2006

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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11^th international social justice conference, Berlin 2006

     

‘Unarmed’ We Intervene,Unnoticed We Remain: The Deviant Case of ‘February 28th Coup’ in Turkey

When a military staged an intervention during the Cold War, students of civil-military relations could quite easily tell if it was a coup d’état. This no longer seems to be the case. The reason may be the regnant understanding of coup d’état as a violent (bloody), swift, and extralegal/extra-constitutional seizure of power by first and foremost military officers or members of state apparatus after a long time of secret planning. This article takes stock of political complexities surrounding coups in our times by studying the nationally and internationally neglected case of February 28^th (1997) coup process in Turkey as a ‘deviant case’, based on newly-revealed military documents as primary sources and several previously unstudied memoirs by army officers of the period. It argues that the February 28^th coup was deliberately stretched over a long process, it was violent but not bloody, was staged almost openly through ‘theoretically constitutional political operations’ and psychological warfare against the elected government. Several select ‘civilian’ groups from the media, judiciary, trade unions, and non-governmental organisations were happily enlisted by the military as active participants in the coup caravan and without them as unique and pioneering a coup as the February 28^th could not be executed.     

Iraq's oil war in the USA during the October 1973 War

While the October 1973 War has been studied from many angles, the Iraqi–American perspective has never been fully investigated. During this war the Ba^cth regime in Iraq felt compelled not only to send forces to the front, but also to harm American oil interests. As Washington was trying to mitigate the militant situation and prevent the imposition of an oil embargo, Baghdad continuously adopted a confrontational anti-American, anti-Israeli stance. This article uncovers evidence to show that while the Ba^cth regime did indeed attack American interests, it only did so in ways that would not endanger Iraqi stability and economic interests. The article is based mainly on US National Archives documents, as well as on Iraqi sources.     

Young people and AIDS in Thailand and South East Asia

In 1999, 1.5 million Asians were infected with HIV (compared to 5.6 million people worldwide).² The epidemic, spurred by the sex industry and intravenous drug use in south east Asia, is tragically concentrated among the young: 50% of the 6.5 million living with the infection worldwide are under 25.³ There is great cause for concern, but also vast potential for change and, until there is a vaccine, prevention is the key. Thailand's example offers proof that prevention efforts in many Asian countries can meet with success if they are well conceived and applied. As in Thailand, youth is a key factor in combating the epidemic for the rest of south east Asia.     

Exchange controls and national capitalism: The Philippines experience

(There is an) unnecessary degree of unreality and Western bias involved in most economic theorizing about the rural tropical world, as well as economists' gullibility in their use of official statistics…¹     

Pax Africana in the age of extremes

Agriculture in Asia was revolutionised in the latter part of the 20^th century through the creative use of new technologies and well‐targeted government intervention. Similar principles can be applied in Africa.     

The Ethiopian root of Thomas More’s Utopia

The classical utopian novels of early-modern Europe, such as Utopia, Christianopolis and City of the sun, are widely understood in mainstream academics as products of the writers’ inventive imaginations of better social organisations. Suggestions regarding the possibility that places with the social and administrative features depicted in the novels might actually have existed in medieval times, are often dismissed by Western scholars who argue that the role of non-European civilisations in the early-modern proliferation of utopian novels did not go beyond helping to inspire the writers’ creative mix of narrations. A disregard for the fact that medieval utopian novels could be modified and/or de-identified versions of earlier reports about 12^th- and 13^th-century Ethiopians (‘the Land of Prester John’) has severely distorted the mainstream understanding of utopianism and renaissance by African scholars. This article specifically focuses on More’s Utopia, to assert its Ethiopian root using historical and religious evidence.     

The Chinese and the Philippine Political Process

Philippine Chinese contributed liberally to politics but without asking anything openly for themselves. They habitually concealed their wealth, having been taught what comes of envy on the part of a government which they cannot control¹     

Bint al-Shati's Wives of the Prophet: Feminist or Feminine?

The Egyptian writer and Islamic scholar Dr. ^cA'isha ^cAbd al-Rahman (b. 1913), who originated from the countryside, was a pioneering woman in many respects, although she did not consider herself to be a feminist. She was one of the first Egyptians to write about the agrarian problems of the country and the plight of the peasants; and of the pioneering generation of female Arab literati. She was also the first Muslim woman to undertake Quranic exegesis. Writing under her pen name, Bint al-Shati', she was also one of the first women to deal with the life of the Prophet Muhammad through vignettes of the women in his life. Like many other modern Muslim biographers of the Prophet, she rendered classical Islamic materials in a new style. Although her book on the Wives of the Prophet often portrays women in a negative light, content analysis indicates that the work also reflects feminist themes.     

African modernities and the critical reappropriation of indigenous knowledges: Towards a polycentric global epistemology

ABSTRACT

While the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (AU/NEPAD) strives for both plurilateralism and regionalism, there are ideological and practical conditions that challenge the feasibility of a fully fledged regional integration institution in Africa. This article examines the AU/NEPAD in relation to Africa's ideological back-loading, while it explores how the programme reconciles Western-dominated economic plurilateralism with Africa's developmental regionalism. It highlights the ideological changes that helped with the modernisation of Western countries and how these developments become a challenge to Africa's economic development efforts. Africa has always been an ideological back-loader and a delayed integrator into global interdependence. During the mid-20^th century, at the time Western countries (in particular Western European countries) were adopting regionalism, Africa was engaged in the same phenomenon for political and economic independence. While the economic crisis of the mid-20^th century following the Second World War (WW2) enabled the industrialised countries to adopt embedded liberalism for socioeconomic development, at decolonisation Africa sought to espouse what turned out to be the dependency paradigm as the economic development strategy for Africa. In the 21st century, developed regions are transcending regionalism and gearing towards plurilateralism while most African leaders remain fixated in traditional regional integration on the continent. As the neoliberal ideology dominates the contemporary international political economy of the 21^st century, albeit questionably, Africa's politico-socioeconomic realities are also premised on the same embedded liberalism. However, economic plurilateralism by industrialised countries with Africa challenges efforts towards regional integration on the continent. It would seem that the AU/NEPAD provides a viable compromise between developmental regionalism and economic plurilateralism on the continent.     

Book reviews: South Asia

This policy essay examines the historical and policy evolution in Bhutan from the creation of Bhutan in the 1600s to 2014. An examination of the overarching policy intent of Gross National Happiness is reviewed as well as how modern political institutions in Bhutan implement Gross National Happiness. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the new Bhutanese state founded by the Shabrung Ngawang Namgyal established its political and institutional right and legitimacy to rule based on Mahayana Buddhism canonical tenets, including ensuring that Bhutanese citizens could obtain Enlightenment and happiness. A modern manifestation of this historical precedent for state and political institutional intervention to promote collective happiness is embodied in the policy of Gross National Happiness. This essay concludes by noting that modern Gross National Happiness is a holistic development approach based on a trend emanating from more ancient Mahayana Buddhist traditions Gross National Happiness balanced with modern economic, governmental, and social conditions with Mahayana Buddhist spiritual requirements embodied in Gross National Happiness.     

Revisiting the national question and rethinking the political trajectory of Africa in the 21st century

Abstract

The national question in postcolonial Africa encapsulates the totality of national and social challenges that needs resolution. These include the burden of building postcolonial nations, reconstructing postcolonial states, promoting economic development, entrenching popular democracy, defending national sovereignty, consolidating political power, and eventually achieving regional integration and pan-African unity, as long term goals. To resolve these issues, founding fathers crafted different national projects as working ideological and political frameworks, aimed at resolving the national question. This article builds on the continuing concern about the national question, to carry out a critical historiographical study of the nature and conflicted agendas of national project(s), while at the same time providing substatiation for their resuscitation during the current age of failing capitalist neo-liberal project. The premise of the article is that the national question remains relevant beyond the 20^th century as it entails dealing with unresolved national and social questions including challenges of converting territorial nationalism into pan-Africanism as well as democratising global asymmetrical power politics in the 21^st century.     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

“A DISMAL BUT PROFITABLE DITCH”: THE SUEZ CANAL THEN AND NOW

This article traces the history of the Suez Canal since its origins in the 19^th century to the present-day. It gives an outline not only of the antecedents of the Canal, but also looks at the August 2015 widening and deepening of the Canal with its effects of the Egyptian economy and international commerce.     

Religion and political allegiance

What are the religious differences between Australians who prefer the Australian Labor party, the Democratic Labor party, or the Liberal/Country parties? Before we answer this question from the data of the ‘religion in Australia’ survey¹ it may be useful for at least some readers to give a short summary of the relationship between denominations and voting patterns. I apologise to those readers for whom all this is old ground.     

Dilemmas in the making of civil society in Korean political reform

As Korea moves from a state-dominated to a civilian-driven society, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as an institutional hybrid that undertakes public functions through private initiatives. Recently NGOs have gone beyond diverse social issues to promote political reform. On 12 January 2000, Citizens' Alliance for General Elections (CAGE) — a loosely coupled coalition of NGOs formed to reform the nomination process and realize citizen political sovereignty — ousted 59 of 86 disfavored candidates from the political stage in the 16^th General Elections in 2000. The coalition gained public support and persuaded the government to revise election law and readjust electoral constituencies. NGOs such as CAGE have thus become salient political actors and credible public institutions propelling democratic transition. Yet CAGE activities were never made legal and failed to mobilize voters — the 16^th elections had the lowest voter turnout in Korean history left regional party monopoly intact, and provided no clear vision for political reform. CAGE inability to generate grassroots collective action exacerbated its own lack of focus, even as its success diminshed the role of conventional political actors. These limitations, representing instructive dilemmas in the making of civil society, suggest that NGOs need to specify their functions, increase civic engagement, and promote citizen networks and cooperation for the common good in a society.