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12. Plowshares into Swords: An Interview with David Ekbladh
- Author:
- David Ekbladh and Seokju Oh
- Publication Date:
- 09-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- As much as it was a moment of America’s reckoning of its own immense power or its sudden vulnerability, the early-1940s was also a moment of a successful transplantation. Technical experts of the League of Nations were shipped (literally in a Pan Am Yankee Clipper) across the Atlantic and were soon incorporated into America’s war effort and postwar planning. Their knowledge on food, public health, world economy, and many more was weaponized, first, to win the war against the Axis powers and later, to “win the peace” against the Soviet Union. How was this transfer of knowledge possible? According to David Ekbladh’s new book, Plowshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations (University of Chicago Press, 2022), it is essential to understand the US’ special relationship with the League during the interwar years. Contrary to being skeptical outsiders, many Americans were dedicated insiders; they intermingled with fellow liberal internationalists to exchange ideas to address what they conceptualized as common global problems brought about by industrial modernity. In essence, the successful transplantation of internationalist knowledge at the onset of the Second World War was feasible because it had been nurtured over the preceding two decades within the liberal international society of which the US was an integral part. As Ekbladh points out in the introduction, “American internationalism was, well, international.” During the course of the conversation, Ekbladh expanded upon his views on internationalism and hegemony, the role of internationalists from “non-Great Powers” in the liberal international order, and the place of democracy and planning in the thoughts of the interwar liberal internationalists.
- Topic:
- History, Liberalism, Interview, League of Nations, International Order, and Internationalism
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus and United States of America
13. War, Plague and Inflation: Is this time different?: An Interview with Dr. Natacha Postel-Vinay
- Author:
- Natacha Postel-Vinay and Tehreem Husain
- Publication Date:
- 05-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- World economies are facing a troika of challenges in the form of war (in Ukraine), disease (COVID19) and return of inflation, all of which have led to dampened growth globally. This invites us to ask how new these challenges, individually and as a combination, are, and what lessons we can draw from history? To answer these questions, we take a long-run view from more than 100 years of history to discuss the implications of war, disease, and inflation on our economies. This interview features Dr. Natacha Postel-Vinay, an economic and financial historian and Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Postel-Vinay is an expert on the economic history of the Great Depression. Her research focuses on public finance, private finance, and welfare. More specifically, her research looks at the connections between bank risk-taking, banking crises, banking crisis resolution, public debt, and moral hazard, all from a historical perspective. I seek her opinion on the current economic environment and discuss how history can inform the present. The talk is structured in two parts. The first part focuses on understanding the similarities and differences between the experiences of inflation, war, and pandemic today compared to the interwar period. This section covers rising indebtedness and the impact of war, pandemic, and inflation on bank lending and credit supply. The second part focuses on highlighting some solutions to the present crisis and highlighting the risks to recovery.
- Topic:
- War, History, Inflation, Interview, and Disease
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
14. Recovering the History of Interwar International Environmental Law: An Interview with Omer Aloni
- Author:
- Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín and Omer Aloni
- Publication Date:
- 04-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- For a long time, international legal scholars and practitioners tended to see the League of Nations solely as a historical failure. In leading textbooks and inside the classroom, it was not uncommon to read and hear depictions of the interwar international institutions as a mere prelude to the post-1945 international order. The League, in comparison to the United Nations, was dismissed as a moment of not yet. In the last decade or so, however, more nuanced waves of scholarship across disciplines have unearthed the inner lives of international ordering, exploring the immense efforts and disappointments that surrounded the work of the League and other interwar institutions. In his recent monograph, Omer Aloni joins this renaissance of historical scholarship, adding a distinctively socio-legal perspective grounded in rich archival research to a conversation in which lawyers have been relative latecomers. In this sense, The League of Nations and the Protection of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2021) provides an exploration the ways in which the relations between “nature, environment, and humankind” were legally regulated at the international plane in the interwar period—and beyond. Aloni’s monograph offers a textured account not only of the origins of modern international environmental law, but also of the deep roots of our contemporary ecological crises. In it, we find that many of the issues that contemporary commentators decry as novel have, in fact, long histories. For instance, Aloni details that the quest for environmental protection and conservation has long been tangled with difficult questions related to scientific expertise, civil society participation, colonial and imperial hegemony, industrial lobbies and economic interests, and the relationship between public and private interests. By exploring several cases studies (which, as Aloni notes, “cover almost every part of the Earth—from the depth of the oceans to wooden landscapes”), the monograph provides us with a thick account of the interaction between the League, legal vocabularies, and environmental agendas. In our conversation, we explore what Dr. Aloni’s book can reveal about the challenges that international organizations face in their quest to enact environmental regulation as the planetary situation becomes increasingly dire.
- Topic:
- Environment, International Law, History, Interview, and League of Nations
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
15. The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War: An Interview with Nicholas Mulder
- Author:
- Nicholas Mulder and Mahia Bashir
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- The Toynbee Prize Foundation
- Abstract:
- The 2008 global financial crisis and the dislocations it caused sparked a renewed interest in economic and international histories of capitalism, globalization, and internationalism and produced a new corpus of writings that we broadly know as new economic and new international histories. Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War is the latest addition to this corpus. It details the history of sanctions, their wartime origins in the economic blockade of the First World War, and their evolution from a deterrent to an actively used tool of modern state warfare. In doing so, it raises and answers important theoretical questions about the limits and contradictions of the interwar liberal international order, state sovereignty, and the legitimacy of a totalising instrument that profoundly and rather devastatingly impacts civilian societies. Through the story of sanctions, the book also offers a fresh perspective on the tragic escalatory spiral of the 1930s—the rise of fascist states but also the Second World War. Straddling regions from Albania, Greece, and Switzerland to Manchuria and Latin America, The Economic Weapon has all the trappings of a gripping international economic history: it blends detail and analysis harmoniously. I had the delightful pleasure of speaking with the author, Nicholas Mulder on a balmy spring day about the book. We talked, inter alia, about Professor Mulder’s scholarly journey, the origins and evolution of sanctions, the ethical dilemmas they posed, and the role of historical memory in the history of sanctions. Professor Mulder was also very generous in giving us a glimpse into his exciting new project on confiscation.
- Topic:
- War, History, Sanctions, and Interview
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
16. Building Climate Resilience in Urban Informal Settlements through Data Co-production
- Author:
- Giulia Sofia Sarno
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Climate change is worsening the number, frequency and duration of natural hazards across the globe, making disaster risk reduction and resilience building among the most pressing challenges ahead. According to UN-Habitat, informal settlements are where the impacts of climate change are the most acute in urban areas and strengthening resilience in these neighbourhoods represents a very complex yet urgent challenge.[1] Today, urban areas are home to 56 per cent of the world’s population and this figure is projected to increase to 60 per cent by 2030 and 68 per cent by 2050, with 90 per cent of the growth by 2050 expected to occur in less developed economies.[2] In these countries, population growth and displacement (including climate-driven migrations) will lead to rapid and unplanned urbanisation forcing a growing number of people into informal settlements. Currently, one billion people live in informal settlements, mostly in Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and this figure is expected to grow to 3 billion in 2050.[3]
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Crisis Management, Informal Settlement, and Energy
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
17. COP26’s Dilemma: Sustainability vs Food Security?
- Author:
- Jose M. L. Montesclaros
- Publication Date:
- 03-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
- Abstract:
- Ironically, amidst the push to “phase down” coal reliance, the world is seeing a “coal crunch” of rising coal/energy prices, with serious implications on fertilisers and food. Countries pursuing sustainability initiatives ignore these trade-offs at their own peril.
- Topic:
- Development, Energy Policy, Food, Food Security, and Sustainability
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
18. Planetary Health: Managing Competing Tensions
- Author:
- Margareth Sembiring
- Publication Date:
- 05-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
- Abstract:
- After more than two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, wars present a stark reminder of how difficult it is to stay committed to environmental causes when crises arise.
- Topic:
- Environment, Health, International Cooperation, Pandemic, and COVID-19
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
19. Urban Resilience: A 21ˢᵗ Century Challenge
- Author:
- S. Nanthini
- Publication Date:
- 08-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
- Abstract:
- Cities are now home to more than half the global population. As the urban population continues to increase amid the intensification of the effects of climate change, urban disasters are set to affect more people than ever before. As such, strategies to build urban resilience are quickly becoming an urgent matter of global concern.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Urban, Population Growth, and Resilience
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
20. Human Development and Mental Health: New Approaches and Metrics Needed
- Author:
- Julius Caesar Trajano
- Publication Date:
- 09-2022
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
- Abstract:
- The latest UN study reiterated the importance of mental wellbeing and psychological resilience in human development and security. A change in approach and metrics is necessary to improve tackling of mental health issues while simultaneously managing contemporary challenges such as climate change, conflict prevention, and protection of the environment.
- Topic:
- Development, Environment, Health, International Cooperation, United Nations, Mental Health, and Resilience
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus