PAX SYRIANA: THE STAYING POWER OF BASHAR AL ASSAD

The staying power of Bashar al Assad and the ability of his state to outplay their regional and international enemies have come as a surprise to many. Rather than just the Russians and Iranians being responsible for this there was a coherent strategy to win back not just the territory but also the alliances that it temporarily lost during the course of this war. And unlike Saddam after the first gulf war, Bashar al Assad is already remerging fast as a regional player again. Veteran diplomats such as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski had cautioned against a fight against Assad, so had seasoned academics such as David Lesch and Patrick Seale. Whilst many experts had predicted the fall of Assad within weeks in 2011 a careful reading of the Lebanese war and Syrian regional policy would act as the best guide to answer how Assad has managed to stay in power despite all the odds. A combination of his father's legacy and regional alliances has helped him a great deal. The ethnic and sectarian fault lines of Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Palestine have all contributed to his success including receiving support from virtually all stake holders of relevant neighbours such as the Shia and Christian of Lebanon, the Palestinian factions, the Alevi and Arabs of Turkey, the Sunni or Iraq. An ability to divide his opponents both on the battlefield and diplomatic table was the main factor that turned the tide in favour of Assad along with the obvious military support from Russia and Iran, but also by key Arab states such as Egypt and Algeria.     

Crime,politics and business in 1990s Ukraine

In contrast to Russian studies, the study of crime and corruption in Ukraine is limited to a small number of scholarly studies while there is no analysis of the nexus between crime and new business and political elites with law enforcement (Kuzio, 2003a, Kuzio, 2003b). This is the first analysis of how these links emerged in the 1990s with a focus on the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) and the Crimea, two regions that experienced the greatest degree of violence during Ukraine's transition to a market economy. Donetsk gave birth to the Party of Regions in 2001 which has become Ukraine's only political machine winning first place plurality in three elections since 2006 and former Donetsk Governor and party leader Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010 (Zimmer, 2005, Kudelia and Kuzio, 2014). Therefore, an analysis of the nexus that emerged in the 1990s in Donetsk provides the background to the political culture of the country's political machine that, as events have shown since 2010 and during the Euro-Maydan, is also the party most willing in Ukraine to use violence to achieve its objectives.     

简论乌克兰民主与民族主义的互动博弈

近年来,乌克兰政治危机频发,与其民主政治转型密切相关——快速民主化进程带来治理困难的"弱民主",历史原因累积又造成两大主体民族俄罗斯族与乌克兰族的尖锐对立,族裔民族主义隐疾严重侵蚀民主政治的根基。那么,民主与民族主义的孪生关系究竟该如何界定,二者在现代国家构建的过程中又以何种方式进行互动运作,彼此之间的博弈冲突可否化解?鉴此,从乌克兰国家及民族历史背景出发,分析其作为多民族国家典型在现代化进程中民主与民族主义的关系,无疑是求解的有效途径。     

人民军队“样子”的基础性设计——论古田会议在我军建设史上的重大意义

"军队要像军队的样子",这是习近平主席非常关注的邓小平同志的一句话。追本溯源,我军"样子"的基础性设计是由古田会议作出的。正是因为有了古田会议及其决议,我军才脱胎换骨、破茧为蝶,从"面子"到"里子"都真正成为了一支人民军队。古田会议对我军"样子"的基础性设计主要体现在:确立了党对军队绝对领导的原则和制度;完备了我军政治工作的架构;明确了我军必须坚持的政治观点和必须担负的政治任务;确立了我军处理内外部关系的基本原则;为我军形成独具特色的优良作风和革命纪律奠定了基础。     

抗美援朝中志愿军党支部建设经验

抗美援朝战争期间,志愿军各级党委和政治机关结合战时情况努力加强党支部建设,积累了丰富的经验。一是着眼于提高官兵的工作积极性,实施强有力的思想领导;二是着眼于适应新的战争情况,改进党支部的领导方法与作风;三是着眼于解决党员骨干能力偏弱的问题,重视党员的发展、教育和支部领导骨干的培训。     

美军官创伤后应激障碍研究及其启示

近几年,美军针对军官创伤后应激障碍的研究较为系统深入,我军在此领域的研究成果很少。关注和探讨美军官创伤后应激障碍研究成果,有助于加强我军对军官创伤后应激障碍的认知、预防和治疗,有针对性地做好心理援助工作。     

井冈山斗争时期的民主建设

＂以农村包围城市,武装夺取政权,最后夺取全国胜利＂的井冈山道路,不仅是一条将中国革命引向成功的胜利之路,一条符合当时中国国情和革命形势的科学发展之路,而且是一条艰辛探索并取得初步成效的民主实践之路。井冈山时期的军队民主建设、政权民主建设、经济民主建设不仅为井冈山革命根据地的巩固起了积极的推动作用,而且为以后的根据地建设、党的建设、军队建设积累了宝贵的经验。     

Sir Charles Lucas and The Empire at War

Abstract

This article gives an overview of the British Empire’s participation in the First World War. The roles of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa are well documented but there was also a significant contribution from and impact on the smaller and more peripheral territories. These are well covered in Sir Charles Lucas’s multi-volume series The Empire at War. Although very much of its time, written for and by an imperial elite and now neglected, it remains an invaluable record.     

Migrant women breadwinners in Italy during the crisis: improvement or trap?

Gender gaps in some aspects of the labour market in Europe narrowed during the recent economic crisis, mainly because men were hit harder and because of the ‘added worker effect’. Therefore, the number of families with a single wage-earner, in particular female-headed households, increased. However, the differential impact of the crisis on male and female labour force in part was an unintended effect of the ‘gendered’ and ‘racialized’ structure of the labour market. Occupational concentration in care and reproductive work and the public sector in fact protected women from unemployment. Adopting an intersectional approach and using individual and household data from the Labour Force Survey from 2008 to 2015, the aim of this paper is to assess to what extent the gendered and ‘racialized’ structure of the Italian labour market has changed, both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, and to what extent the increase in female breadwinner families, especially among migrants, hides widening or narrowing intersectional inequalities by gender and citizenship.     

An unlikely bulwark of Sovietness: cross-border travel and Soviet patriotism in Western Ukraine, 1956–1985

Focusing on the development of travel between the borderlands of Ukraine and Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, this article explores what it meant to be Soviet outside the Russian core of the USSR between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s. The cautious opening of the Soviet border was part of a larger attempt to find fresh sources of popular support and enthusiasm for the regime's “communist” project. Before the Prague Spring of 1968 in particular, official policies and narratives of travel thus praised local inhabitants who crossed the Soviet border for supposedly overcoming age-old hatreds to build a brighter future in Eastern Europe. By the 1970s, however, smuggling and cultural consumption discredited the idea of “internationalist friendship.” This encouraged residents of Ukraine to speak and write about the continuing importance of the Soviet border. The very idea of Sovietness was defined in national terms, as narratives of travel emphasized that Soviet citizens were inherently different from ethno-national groups in the people's democracies. Eastern Europe thus emerged as an “other” that highlighted the Soviet character of territories incorporated into the USSR after 1939, helping to obscure western Ukraine's troubled past and leading to the emergence of new social hierarchies in the region.