Content Type: Journal Article / Topic: War

401. Justifications of the Iraq War Examined

Author:: Richard B. Miller
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Imagine three cases: Corporal Greene returns to the United States in a body bag having been killed by an elite armed guard in a war that had been officially authorized as a defense of her country against foes who have the capability and desire to attack her fellow citizens and soldiers at home and abroad with acts of terrorism. Such foes may either be planning eventually to launch their own attacks or to facilitate attacks by others who have an established record of using terrorism against U.S. soldiers and citizens.
Topic:: Terrorism and War
Political Geography:: United States and Iraq

402. Planet of Slums

Author:: Ron Kassimir
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Planet of Slums is relentless. Mike Davis, the prolific author and social critic, piles on evidence in the service of a passionate, despairing, and at times furious analysis of the economic, social, and environmental state of cities in the global South. Davis might have just as readily titled his book The World Is a Ghetto, after the 1972 hit by the band War. But a key goal of the book is to show how much things have changed since that time, almost all for the worse. If the book tends to oversimplify enormously complex and diverse urban worlds, it has an undeniable virtue at its core. Whereas the War tune's chorus was ''don't you know / that it's true / that for me and for you / the world is a ghetto,'' Davis never stops asking who the ''me and you'' are. The growth and transformation of slums from Cairo to Manila, from Lagos to Lima, are both a symbol and a cause of a growing gap in life chances (socioeconomic and existential) between rich and poor—local, national, and global in scale.
Topic:: Climate Change, Economics, and War

403. Just War Theory and the Privatization of Military Force

Author:: James Pattison
Publication Date:: 07-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Since the 1990 s there has been a marked growth in the private military industry. Private military companies (PMCs) have been taking on an ever-increasing number of roles traditionally performed by the regular military. These range from supplying training, logistics, and other support services to engaging occasionally in actual fighting. This is most notable in Iraq, where the U.K. and U.S. governments have employed a host of ''security'' companies, such as Aegis, Blackwater, Control Risks Group, Erinys, Vinnell, and KBR. The use of these companies has by no means been limited to Iraq, however. Nor is it only the U.K. and the U.S. that have made use of their services. Other states, multinational companies, NGOs, and even the U.N. have hired PMCs.
Topic:: Privatization, United Nations, and War
Political Geography:: United States and United Kingdom

404. Bioethics and Armed Conflict: Moral Dilemmas of Medicine and War

Author:: Frances V. Harbour
Publication Date:: 07-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Bioethics and Armed Conflict is a book that people interested in ethics and international affairs will want to have on their shelves. It is important as an analysis of some of the least-discussed dilemmas related to warfare: the ethics of battlefield medical triage, the role of physicians in interrogational torture, weapons research, and peacemaking. The book's value, however, extends beyond its novel subject matter to include its innovative methodology. Michael Gross uses four key principles of bioethics— autonomy, right to life, dignity, and utility (p. 17)—to analyze moral dilemmas of armed conflict. Master's students in my class on ethics and international security loved this book for its real-world issues and systematic arguments.
Topic:: War

405. Editor's Note

Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: The closure case against the ruling AK Party pending before the constitutional court occupied the center stage of Turkish politics throughout the summer. After months of speculation on the fate of the party, the court finally reached a verdict in late July, deciding not to close down the AK Party, and averting what had otherwise promised to be an unprecedented level of political uncertainty, social and economic turmoil, and potential chaos. With the closure case now behind it, the AK Party is expected to be more restrained, and to act responsibly – as it did during the proceedings of the case – while building up its democratic and secular credentials through a reform policy in keeping with the EU accession process. For some time, the ruling AK Party had been under pressure for neglecting, if not abandoning, the EU membership process. In response to critics the government may refocus its energy on the issues that have stalled Turkey's accession.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Russia, Turkey, and Georgia

406. Turkey's Troubles in the Caucasus

Author:: Michael A. Reynolds
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: Increasing numbers of Turks have come to recognize that their country's traditionally hesitant and circumspect foreign policy no longer serves its interests, and is incommensurate with Turkey's regional weight. Accordingly, the governing Justice and Development Party has attempted to shed that tradition by seeking to engage Turkey's neighbors proactively in recent years. In the Caucasus, Ankara has taken steps that may lead to the normalization of relations with Yerevan and the breaking of the stalemate over Nagorno-Karabakh. The Russo-Georgian War of 2008, however, demonstrates that Turkish diplomacy faces a severe test for which it may not be prepared. The war revealed that old institutional practices continue to constrain Turkey's diplomacy; moreover, the war restored Russia to the position of spoiler in the Caucasus. The return of Russia may mean that Turkey's new diplomacy will be too little, too late.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Turkey and Caucasus

407. Apology and the Past in Contemporary France

Author:: Julie Fette
Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: In societies coming to terms with historical injustices, public apology has recently emerged as a potent trend. This is particularly true of France, where the state served as a catalyst for a wave of public apologies for acts of intolerance committed during the Second World War. Following Jacques Chirac's 1995 official apology for Vichy's anti-Semitic policies, various groups in civil society publicly atoned for their particular Vichy roles in discrimination against Jews: the medical profession, the law bar, the Catholic Church, and the police. How does public apology, as distinct from court trials, historical commissions, and reparations, affect contemporary France's reconciliation with its past? This article also analyzes how apologizing for Vichy has created demand for an official French apology for the Algerian War. By 2006, the politics of memory in French society decidedly shifted attention from Vichy to post-colonialism: in both cases, the apology turn imposes new dynamics of remembering and forgetting.
Topic:: Politics and War
Political Geography:: France

408. Rethinking Victory in the "War on Terror"

Author:: Philip H. Gordon
Publication Date:: 01-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:: Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:: GJI A: You say in your new book, Winning the Right War: The Path to Security for America and the World , that we've been fighting the wrong war, the war on terror, for the past six years. Why is the war on terror the "wrong" war? What would be the "right" war? What do you mean by the title?
Topic:: War

409. Key Points from "Memo to the President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership"

Author:: Madeleine Albright
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:: America's next president will face an array of problems more daunting than any since the Vietnam era and will be constrained to do so with US assets—military, economic and political—under severe strain. Our new leader must therefore arrive in the Oval Office equipped not only with the right programs, but also the right temperament to handle the world's most challenging job. Qualifications include analytical skill, an understanding of global strategy, a willingness to recognize and correct mistakes, and a gift for persuading others to do—and even more important to want—what we want.
Topic:: International Relations, Security, Development, Diplomacy, and War
Political Geography:: America and Vietnam

410. Not Too Far: The Cyprus Crises of 1963-74 and Lessons for Present Day Iraq

Author:: Barin Kayaoglu
Publication Date:: 04-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: The Cyprus tragedy of the past and the Iraq predicament of our times bear striking similarities. Cyprus of the 1960s and 1970s is not too far from Iraq in 2008. The main thrust of this article is that Cyprus presents a useful case study for contemporary decision-makers in the United States, Turkey, and Iraq. Just like the Cyprus question, which has caused nearly irreparable damage to the relations between Turkey, Greece, and the United States, policies that are not carefully crafted by Washington, Ankara, Erbil, and Baghdad could lead to a very problematic future for the Middle East. In a nutshell, this article offers a cautionary analysis by drawing on the experiences of the Cyprus tragedy for the purpose of avoiding a similar one in Iraq.
Topic:: Conflict Prevention and War
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, Turkey, and Middle East

411. ARTICLE: The End of Arab Tiberias: The Arabs of Tiberias and the Battle for the City in 1948

Author:: Mustafa Abbasi
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Tiberias was unique among Palestinian mixed cities for its unusually harmonious Arab-Jewish relations, even during periods of extreme tension like the 1936-39 Arab Revolt. Yet within hours of a brief battle in mid-April 1948, the town's entire Arab population was removed, mostly across the Transjordanian border, making Tiberias a wholly Jewish town overnight. In exploring how this took place, this article focuses on the Arab community's rigid social structure; the leadership's policy of safeguarding intercommunal relations at all costs, heightening local unpreparedness and isolating the town from the rest of Arab Palestine; the growing involvement of the local Jewish community with the Haganah's plans; and the British authorities' virtual abdication of responsibility as they began withdrawing their troops in the last month of the Mandate and as Plan Dalet was launched, engulfing the country in all-out war.
Topic:: Civil Society and War
Political Geography:: Middle East and Arabia

412. Individual Liability of Private Military Personnel under International Criminal Law

Author:: Chia Lehnardt
Publication Date:: 11-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: The article examines the present status of private military personnel under international criminal law. Perpetrators of international crimes are frequently integrated into a hierarchically structured collective, such as an army or police force. The system of order and obedience essential to the functioning of these entities, the existence of which underlies a number of principles of international criminal law, cannot be simply presumed to exist within a private military company (PMC) or between a PMC and the hiring state. As a consequence, the private nature of the company may become an issue, particularly when one considers the capacity of their personnel to commit war crimes or to incur superior or command responsibility. The article also considers problems of implementation and jurisdiction and touches briefly on the question of corporate criminal responsibility of the PMC itself. It will be argued that, in theory, international criminal law can be an efficient part of the legal regime governing the use and conduct of private military companies, although many of the legal issues discussed remain to be tested.
Topic:: War

413. Secrets and Lies: The Persecution of Muhammad Salah (Part I)

Author:: Michael E. Deutsch and Erica Thompson
Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: The case of Muhammad Salah, a Palestinian-American grocer and Chicago resident, is the longest-running terrorism case in the United States. He was brought to trial on terrorism-funding charges in October 2006 after a thirteen-year saga that began with his January 1993 arrest in Israel as the "world commander of Hamas" and that continued in the United States following his release from Israeli prison in late 1997. Though acquitted of all terrorism-related charges by a U.S. federal jury in Chicago in February 2007, Salah was convicted on a single count of obstruction of justice. In this exclusive report for JPS, Salah's lawyers recount the unfolding of this landmark and labyrinthine case, analyzing its legal underpinnings and implications. His prosecution served to advance new standards governing the admissibility of coerced confessions at trial and the use of secret evidence, while at the same time establishing new procedures for preventing the cross-examination of key witnesses and closing the courtroom to the press and public during crucial testimony. Even before his U.S. trial, his taped confession extracted under Shin Bet torture served as the linchpin of the U.S. government's investigation and prosecution of persons it suspected of providing material support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. More broadly, the years covered by the case show the erosion of the rule of law in the United States, as well as the melding of the discourses, strategies, tactics, and aims of U.S. and Israeli law enforcement and intelligence bodies long before the post-9/11 launch of the "global war on terror." Part I of this two-part account lays the ground for the 2006-7 Chicago trial, covering the period of Salah's arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment in Israel and the investigations and legal proceedings against him upon his return. Part II will focus on the crafting of the case by the Justice Department under Pres. George W. Bush and the trial itself.
Topic:: Terrorism and War
Political Geography:: United States, Israel, and Chicago

414. Review: Khalifeh: The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant

Author:: Hala Halim
Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: In awarding Sahar Khalifeh's Sura wa ayquna wa 'ahdun qadim (2002) the American University in Cairo's 2006 Naguib Mahfouz Medal, the jury aptly lauded this "narrative of loss par excellence . . . [as] simultaneously historiciz[ing] for the current Palestinian struggle while summoning a whole array of the symbolic." From its very title, The Image, the Icon, and the Covenant divulges its biblical symbolism, which will be made to bear here further layers of political allusion. Ostensibly the story of a doomed love and the desperate pursuit of its traces decades later, this is a novel of "national allegory," as in Fredric Jameson's formulation.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Brazil, Palestine, and Jerusalem

415. A2. British MP Michael Ancram, Essay Comparing the Northern Ireland and Israeli-Palestinian Conflicts, March 2008 (excerpts)

Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: As minister of state in the Northern Ireland Office in 1994, Michael Ancram was the first British minister to meet with Sinn Fin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 25 years, overseeing talks between Sinn Fein and the British government that began the peace process that ultimately resulted in the decommissioning of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 2005 and the formal implementation of power-sharing in 2007. This essay, entitled "The Middle East Peace Process: The Case for Jaw-Jaw not War-War," first appeared in Accord (Issue 19), Conciliation Resources, March 2008 and was circulated by Conflicts Forum. The full text is available online at www.conflictsforum.org.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Israel, Palestine, and Ireland

416. The Renaissance of Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency: Examining Twenty-First Century Insurgencies and Government Responses

Author:: John J. Le Beau
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Connections
Institution:: Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes
Abstract:: Insurgency and counterinsurgency as types of warfare are currently subject to considerable attention due to the nature of the high-profile struggles underway in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is prudent to note that neither insurgency nor the strategy and tactics required to combat it represent new phenomena. A large body of experience and literature from the twentieth century and earlier exists that addresses both sides of the insurgent struggle. Some characteristics of insurgencies are largely immutable, since insurgency is ultimately a form of warfare that is adopted when a combatant has limited resources and limited choices for how to fight against a more powerful adversary. Today as in the past, these characteristics include employment of small-unit attacks, ambushes, assassinations, propaganda activity, and the development of covert infrastructure. Nevertheless, the primary insurgencies active in the twenty-first century are marked by important differences from earlier struggles, particularly in the areas of motivation and inspiration. Rather than being quintessentially political and interested in local or national grievances, many contemporary insurgencies are at their core linked to a particular interpretation of Islam. Thus, these insurgencies represent a war of religion, not of politics, economics, or ethnicity. Islamist insurgencies are likely to be uncompromising and averse to negotiation, absolutist and pan-national in their goals, and willing to justify the mass slaughter of non-combatants who do not share their religious vision.
Topic:: Islam, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Saudi Arabia

417. Does One Right Make a Realist? Conservatism, Neoconservatism, and Isolationism in the Foreign Policy Ideology of American Elites

Author:: Brian C. Rathbun
Publication Date:: 06-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: American society, it is now frequently stated, is more politically polarized than at any time in recent memory, and a prominent front in the ideological battle between left and right is foreign policy. Most notable is, of course, the war in Iraq, but divisions between Republicans and Democrats over the proper definition of the national interest have been a feature of the post-Cold War era since its inception. Democrats and the left direct most of their ire at the neoconservatives who, they argue, have masterminded America's grand strategy since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. This partisan conflict, a genuine ideological difference, has somewhat distracted from divisions within the right. Neoconservatives have also faced significant criticism from other factions within the Republican Party. Condemnation from both traditional conservatives and isolationists has been as strident and vicious as that of the left. This raises the question of whether there is any common set of fundamentals that defines the right's foreign policy in the United States, and if not, why these subgroups are considered to be on the same side of the political spectrum.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America

418. The Trouble With Congo

Author:: Séverine Autesserre
Publication Date:: 05-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Foreign Affairs
Institution:: Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:: Although the war in Congo officially ended in 2003, two million people have died since. One of the reasons is that the international community's peacekeeping efforts there have not focused on the local grievances in eastern Congo, especially those over land, that are fueling much of the broader tensions. Until they do, the nation's security and that of the wider Great Lakes region will remain uncertain.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Democratic Republic of the Congo

419. Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes

Author:: Muhammad Hallaj
Publication Date:: 10-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes Muhammad Hallaj Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), p. 66Palestinian Voices Muhammad Hallaj, a political scientist specializing in Palestinian affairs and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was born in Qalqilya, Palestine, in 1932. After earning his doctorate from the University of Florida in 1966, he taught at Florida's Jacksonville University and then at the University of Jordan in Amman. Hallaj returned to the West Bank in 1975, where he served as dean of social sciences and later as academic vice president of Birzeit University before becoming the first director of the Council for Higher Education in the West Bank and Gaza. While taking a leave to go to Harvard University as a visiting scholar in 1983, Hallaj was denied a visa to return to the West Bank. Among the positions he has held since then have been editor of Palestine Perspectives (1983-1991), member (and subsequent head) of the Palestinian delegation on Refugees to the multilateral peace talks following the Madrid conference (1991-1993), and executive director of the Palestine Center and the Jerusalem Fund. At the request of JPS, Dr. Hallaj shared his memories of the 1948 war and its aftermath, which he experienced as a high school student in Jaffa, and then in Qalqilya and Tulkarm.
Topic:: United Nations and War
Political Geography:: Palestine

420. Hochberg: In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination

Author:: Haim Bresheeth
Publication Date:: 10-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Palestine Studies
Institution:: Institute for Palestine Studies
Abstract:: Hochberg: In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination Reviewed by Haim BresheethJournal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), p. 90Recent Books In Spite of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination, by Gil Z. Hochberg. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. xiii + 141 pages. Notes to p. 165. Bibliography to p. 183. Index to p. 192. $35.00 cloth. Haim Bresheeth, professor of media and cultural studies at the University of East London, is co-editor of "The Conflict and Contemporary Visual Culture in Palestine Israel," Third Text 20, nos. 3-4, Oct. 2006; Cinema and Memory: Dangerous Liaisons [in Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2004); and The Gulf War and the New World Order (London: Zed Books, 1992).
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Israel, London, Palestine, and Arabia

421. The political realism of Augustine and Morgenthau: Issues of Man, God, and just war

Author:: Bettina Dahl Soendergaard
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations
Institution:: Center for International Conflict Resolution at Yalova University
Abstract:: Augustine and Morgenthau are examples of classical political realists who base their arguments on the nature of man. Both believe that man is born evil but they differ on the question if man can improve. Augustine also believes that the statesman has a moral purpose while Morgenthau believes that the consequences of man's nature can only be counterbalanced. This difference is rooted in Morgenthau and Augustine's different views of the meaning of peace. To Morgenthau, peace is power balance and stability and a permanent peace cannot be achieved. Augustine, however, describes two kinds of peace, the earthly peace and God's peace. The article discusses these differences and how it impacts their views on moral and war. These different views have similarity with the different views that led to the Reformation in the 1500's and their difference is as great.
Topic:: War

422. In Search of the Right War

Author:: Roberto Menotti
Publication Date:: 03-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The International Spectator
Institution:: Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:: Review of: Winning the right war : the path to security for America and the world, Philip H. Gordon, Times Books, 2007
Topic:: Security and War
Political Geography:: America

423. Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions

Author:: Elan Journo
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: The measure of success in the Iraq war has undergone a curious progression. Early on, the Bush administration held up the vision of a peaceful, prosperous, pro-Western Iraq as its benchmark. But the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein were replaced by the horrors of a sadistic sectarian war and a fierce insurgency that consumed thousands of American lives. And the post-invasion Iraqi regime, it turns out, is led by Islamist parties allied with religious militias and intimately tied to the belligerent Iranian regime. The benchmark, if we can call it that, then shrank to the somewhat lesser vision of an Iraqi government that can stand up on its own, so that America can stand down. But that did not materialize, either. So we heard that if only the fractious Sunni and Shiite factions in the Iraqi government could have breathing space to reconcile their differences, and if only we could do more to blunt the force of the insurgency, that would be progress. To that end, in early 2007, the administration ordered a "surge" of tens of thousands more American forces to rein in the chaos in Iraq. Today, we hear John McCain and legions of conservatives braying that we are, in fact, winning (some go so far as to say we have already won). Why? Because the "surge" has reduced the number of attacks on U.S. troops to the levels seen a few years ago (when the insurgency was raging wildly) and the number of Iraqis slaughtering their fellow countrymen has taken a momentary dip. Victory, apparently, requires only clearing out insurgents (for a while) from their perches in some neighborhoods, even though Teheran's influence in the country grows and Islamists carve out Taliban-like fiefdoms in Iraq. The goals in Iraq "have visibly been getting smaller," observes John Agresto, a once keen but now disillusioned supporter of the campaign (p. 172). Iraq, he argues contra his fellow conservatives, has been a fiasco. "If we call it 'success,' it's only because we've lowered the benchmark to near zero" (p. 191). . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Iraq and America

424. First into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War by George Weller, edited and with an essay

Author:: John David Lewis
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: During World War II, the prime source of information for Americans about the war overseas was the dispatches of foreign correspondents-men who put their lives on the line in war zones to report the truth. George Weller was a giant among such men. Captured by the Nazis and traded for a German journalist, Weller watched the Belgian Congolese Army attack Italians in Ethiopia, saw the invasion of Crete, interviewed Charles de Gaulle in South Africa following an escape through Lisbon, and overcame malaria to report on the war in the Pacific. He was the first foreign correspondent trained as a paratrooper, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his report of an appendectomy on a submarine. He wrote the book Singapore is Silent in 1942 after seeing the city fall to the Japanese, and he advocated a global system of United States bases in his 1943 book Bases Overseas. After witnessing Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945, he broke General Douglas MacArthur's order against travel to Nagasaki by impersonating an American colonel and taking a train to the bombed-out city. In a period of six weeks, he sent typewritten dispatches totaling some fifty thousand words back to American newspapers through official channels of the military occupation. Under MacArthur's directives, they were censored and never made it into print. Weller died in 2002 thinking his dispatches had been lost. Months later his son, Anthony Weller, found a crate of moldy papers with the only surviving carbon copies. Anthony Weller edited the dispatches and included his own essay about his father, resulting in this priceless addition to our information about World War II in the Pacific, and the birth of the atomic age. The importance of the dispatches, however, extends far beyond the value of the information from Nagasaki. George Weller is a voice from a past generation, and the publication of his censored dispatches raises a series of deeply important issues and, in the process, reveals an immense cultural divide between his world and ours today. On September 8, 1945, two days after he arrived in Nagasaki, Weller wrote his third dispatch concerning Nagasaki itself. He described wounded Japanese in two of Nagasaki's undestroyed hospitals, and recorded the question posed by his official guide: Showing them to you, as the first American outsider to reach Nagasaki since the surrender, your propaganda-conscious official guide looks meaningfully in your face and wants to know: "What do you think?" What this question means is: Do you intend writing that America did something inhuman in loosing this weapon against Japan? That is what we want you to write (p. 37). What would many reporters today write if asked this question by bombed enemy civilians? . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Japan, America, Germany, and Nagasaki

425. Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000

Author:: Gus Van Horn
Publication Date:: 12-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: In August 1919, three white men brutally beat John R. Shillady in broad daylight outside his hotel. Shillady, also white, had come to Austin, Texas, as executive secretary of the NAACP to persuade state officials not to suppress its local branch. One of his attackers, a county judge, claimed that "it was my duty to stop him" because Shillady was there to "sow discontent among the Negroes" (pp. 105-106). In 1920, Shillady would resign from the NAACP, expressing despair for his cause: "I am less confident than heretofore . . . of the probability of overcoming, within a reasonable period, the forces opposed to Negro equality" (p. 109). And yet, not even a century later, the United States has elected its first black president-in an election in which race was hardly an issue. How did racial equality in America progress so far in so short a time? This is the remarkable story that Adam Fairclough relates in Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000. Fairclough succeeds in making his introduction to the struggle for black equality accessible to the general reader in two ways. First, he concentrates on events in the South, wherein particularly harsh forms of racial domination made it the logical focus of black efforts to achieve equality. Second, he follows the lead of fellow historian John W. Cell and classifies the approaches taken by various figures in his narrative as either "militant confrontation" (defiantly opposing racial oppression), "separatism" (working toward the creation of an all-black society here or abroad), or "accommodation" (gradually securing improvements from within the system of white supremacy) (pp. xi-xii). It is from this perspective that the book's chapters examine prominent individuals, organizations, events, and periods of the civil rights movement. Fairclough begins his narrative at a time when blacks were "more powerless than at any other time since the death of slavery" and had been "purged from the voting rolls" of the former Confederacy (pp. 15-17). He proceeds to examine the many different ways in which blacks fought against discrimination and oppression: from the intransigent, confrontational approach of Ida B. Wells, who campaigned against lynching in the 1890s; to the accommodation of Booker T. Washington, whose emphasis on black self-improvement over confrontation is characterized by Fairclough as "a tactical retreat in order to prepare the way for a strategic advance" (p. 63); to the separatism of Marcus Garvey, who proposed that blacks fight for an independent, united Africa (p. 126). Fairclough continues this kind of analysis throughout subsequent chapters, where we learn, among other things, about the involvement of the labor movement and the Communist party in the civil rights movement during the 1930s, the evolution of the NAACP's strategy to include legal challenges to discrimination in education after World War II and then mass civil disobedience after 1955, and the rise and fall of the "Black Power" movement. . . .
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States and America

426. Sun-tzu: Art of War, translated with an introduction and commentary by Ralph D. Sawyer

Author:: John David Lewis
Publication Date:: 09-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The Objective Standard
Institution:: The Objective Standard
Abstract:: War is one of man's most destructive activities (only dictatorship has ruined more lives), and it is not surprising that thousands of books have been written about it. Yet, paradoxically, books on war itself-books concerned with war as a phenomenon, rather than focused on strategy, tactics, or some particular war-have been relatively few. This is due in part to the focus by modern scholars on the minutiae of human affairs, and their reluctance to deal with broad generalizations; but the failure to come to grips with the abstract principles of war goes back to the dawn of historical writing. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, a soaring intellect obsessed by the great war between Athens and Sparta, identified "honor, security and interest" as causally important principles that motivate men "for all time." But even Thucydides did not examine the philosophical foundations of these factors; he took them as given in human nature, which left the study of war mired in the vagaries of human desires and without philosophical grounding.1 As a result, important questions remained unanswered: What are the principles of war; what are their philosophical foundations, and what methods of waging war do they imply? In ancient China, a thriving culture of thinkers tried to answer such questions. They derived principles of warfare from ideas that were fundamental to their own philosophies and applied those principles to the practical needs of military commanders. The extant remains of these works have been compiled into the so-called seven Chinese military classics, the best preserved of which is Art of War by Sun-tzu, who lived sometime between 450 and 250 BC, about the time of classical Greece.2 This was approximately the "Warring States" period of Chinese history, when China was divided among military warlords, iron was first used in weapons, armies grew to more than one hundred thousand men, and commanders needed expert guidance to help them organize their huge forces. Ralph Sawyer has produced a lively translation, with a historical essay and explanatory notes, of Sun-tzu's classic work. Sawyer also includes new supplementary material, found in graves and carved on bamboo stalks, that adds to our knowledge of ancient Chinese thought. . . .
Topic:: War

427. Space Weaponization and Canada-U.S. Relations: Lessons from Australia

Author:: Steve Buchta
Publication Date:: 05-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:: School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:: Since the end of World War II, Canadian security policy has maintained a highly adaptive quality. New circumstances and emerging threats have continually challenged the evolutionary capacity of the Canadian military. The repeated success of Canada's defense can be attributed to a sound capacity to anticipate security needs, generate appropriate approaches to combat and foster strategic partnerships with close allies. Now more than ever Canada must modernize its security policy. Major players in global politics have largely finished reshaping the post-Cold War geo-strategic environment. Most notably, the United States has taken an assertive role in the fight against terrorism. In this stasis of new global order, Canada has aligned itself with NATO members to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan and has been committed to implementing the Canada-U.S. 2001 Smart Border Declaration. Clearly, Canada has demonstrated a sovereign interest in building closer security relations with the United States.
Topic:: Security, NATO, Climate Change, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:: Afghanistan, United States, Canada, Taliban, and Australia

428. Japan-China Relations

Author:: James J. Przystup
Publication Date:: 10-2008
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Comparative Connections
Institution:: Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:: The issue of contaminated frozen gyoza moved to the bilateral front burner during the quarter. In his meeting with President Hu Jintao on the sidelines of the G8 summit at Lake Toya, Hokkaido and again during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, Prime Minster Fukuda Yasuo emphasized the importance of making progress on the six-month old case. Hu promised to accelerate efforts to identify the source of the problem and in mid-September, Japanese media reported that Chinese authorities had detained nine suspects at the Tianyang factory. The commemoration of the end of World War II on Aug. 15 passed quietly with only three Cabinet ministers visiting the Yasukuni Shrine. Meanwhile, joint Japanese and Chinese public opinion polling data revealed markedly different perceptions on the state and future course of the bilateral relationship. In early September, Japan's Ministry of Defense released its Defense White Paper 2008, which again expressed concerns about China's military modernization and its lack of transparency. Later in the month, the Maritime Self-Defense Force sighted what was believed to be an unidentified submarine in Japanese territorial waters. Reacting to Japanese media speculation, China's Foreign Ministry denied that the submarine belonged to China's Navy.
Topic:: Development and War
Political Geography:: Japan, China, and Beijing

429. Uganda's Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention

Author:: Adam Branch
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: With its 2003 ''Referral of the Situation Concerning the Lord's Resistance Army'' to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Ugandan government launched a legal process that, it claimed, would bring peace and justice to war-torn northern Uganda. The ICC prosecutor officially opened an investigation in response to the referral in July 2004, and in October 2005 the ICC unsealed arrest warrants, its historic first warrants in its historic first case, charging five of the top commanders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) with war crimes and crimes against humanity. For two decades, Uganda north of the Nile has been ravaged by a brutal civil war between the LRA and the Ugandan government, so any possibility of productive change is to be warmly welcomed. The sanguine predictions proffered by the Ugandan government and by the ICC's supporters, however, are called into question by doubts about the court's ability to achieve peace or justice in Uganda, doubts stemming from the specific way the ICC has pursued the Ugandan case, and because of more inherent problems with the ICC as a legal institution.
Topic:: Government and War
Political Geography:: Uganda

430. Liability and Just Cause

Author:: Thomas Hurka
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan's "Just Cause for War" (Ethics International Affairs, 19.3, 2005). McMahan holds, as many have, that there is a just cause for war against group X only if X have made themselves liable to military force by being responsible for some serious wrong. But he interprets this liability requirement in a very strict way. He insists (i) that one may use force against X for purpose Y only if they are responsible for a wrong specifically connected to Y; and (ii) that one may use force against an individual member of X only if he himself shares in the responsibility for the wrong. This paper defends a more permissive, and more traditional, view of just war liability against McMahan's claims. Against (i) it argues that certain 'conditional just causes' such as disarming an aggressor, deterring future aggression, and preventing lesser humanitarian crimes can be legitimate goals of war against X even if X have no specific liability connected to them. Against (ii) it argues that soldiers who have no responsibility for X's wrong may nonetheless be legitimately attacked because in becoming soldiers they freely surrendered their right not to be killed by enemy combatants in a war between their and another state, so killing them in such a war is not unjust. Though initially a criticism of McMahan, the paper makes positive proposals about conditional just causes and the moral justification for directing force at soldiers.
Topic:: War

431. Book Review: Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism by Michael Walzer

Author:: Stuart A. Cohen
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: This volume of collected essays, most of which have been published in earlier volumes in the Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics, seeks to bring a more concentrated focus on specifically Jewish outlooks regarding three key themes: "Political Order and Civil Society"; "Territory, Sovereignty, and International Society"; and "War and Peace." According to Michael Walzer, "The point is to display a range of Jewish responses to some of the hardest questions posed by modern democratic politics"
Topic:: Politics, Sovereignty, War, and Law

432. Book Review: The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again by Peter Beinart

Author:: Marcus A. Roberts
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: Peter Beinart's new book offers the Democratic Party a "new liberalism," a vision he bases on the party's history of moral leadership and success in combating totalitarianism in the post–World War II era. Opposing those who demonize the "liberal" label, Beinart holds up liberalism as the theme by which America achieved national greatness in the past and the means by which it might do so once again—if only the Democratic Party would embrace it fully once more.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: America

433. The Rules of War

Author:: Brian Orend
Publication Date:: 12-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Abstract:: These three books show how the enduring principles of just war theory can be applied insightfully and fruitfully to even the latest kinds of conflict, weaponry, and tactics; and they show how just war theory raises significant issues of the background political context, out of which all wars develop.
Topic:: War

434. Northern Iraq and its Neighbors: The regional dimension of the Kurdish question

Author:: Ole Frahm
Publication Date:: 01-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: Northern Iraq has seen ethnic mobilization and violent political conflict since the creation of the current state system in the interwar period. Throughout this period, Iraq's Kurds have rejected attempts of various governments to assimilate and absorb them into their pan-Arab ideologies. The underlying fear on behalf of Turkey's government is that an independent Kurdistan would have an osmotic effect and automatically strengthen irredentist and pan-Kurdish segments and sentiments among Turkish Kurds and in a worst case scenario lead to a renewed intra-state conflict between separatists and the state on the scale of the early 1990s.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Iraq and Turkey

435. Iraqi Partition and Turkey's War on Terror: A Wider Perspective

Author:: Bülent Aras
Publication Date:: 07-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Insight Turkey
Institution:: SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:: In an age of war on terror, Turkey pursues its own war against the escalating PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) terror. The dynamics that led to a parliamentary motion for a cross border operation into Northern Iraq will have implications for Turkey's relations with Washington, Baghdad and other capitals in the region. The Expanded Meeting of the Neighboring Countries of Iraq held in Istanbul on 2-3 November 2007 coincided with Turkey's intensive regional diplomacy. There are serious challenges to ending PKK terrorism and finding a lasting solution to the Kurdish problem. The Erdogan Government must fight terrorism in a way that will not jeopardize the process of democratization and political reforms in Turkey.
Topic:: Terrorism and War
Political Geography:: Iraq and Turkey

436. On the Road to a German “Postnationalism”? Athletic Competition between the Two German States in the Era of Konrad Adenauer

Author:: Martin H. Geyer
Publication Date:: 06-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: German Politics and Society
Institution:: German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:: Sports have always been used to promote the nation state and the invention of national traditions with national symbols such as flags and national hymns playing an important role. This article looks at the peculiar situation of the post-war period when two Germanys established themselves also in the field of sports, yet cooperated in some athletic disciplines, and, most important of all, at the Olympic Games until 1968. This raised a great number of delicate political questions, particularly the politics of the nonrecognition of the GDR which strove hard to establish itself internationally by way of the international sports movement. Konrad Adenauer and the German Sports Organization clashed on this issue which brought to the fore the question of a German and an emerging West-German identity. In order to describe this negotiation of the nation state in the realm of sports, this article tries to make fruitful use of the term postnationalism in order to understand the ambiguities of identity of Germans towards their nation state. It also takes a brief look at the Olympic Games of 1972, which epitomizes more than anything else the peculiar postnationalism of the Federal Republic.
Topic:: Politics and War
Political Geography:: Germany

437. The Policies of Ankara and Berlin toward the Bosnian War: A Comparative Analysis

Author:: Birgül Demirtas-Coskun
Publication Date:: 03-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:: This study analyses the foreign policies of Turkey and Germany toward the Bosnian War, that took place between 1992-1995, in a comparative perspective. Both states had to face an identity crisis in the wake of the phasing out of the bipolar system. Whilst Turkey, all of a sudden, lost its former status within the Western Bloc, Germany could be reunified in a relatively short period of time. The war in Bosnia took place at the very time when an important discussion was continuing about the new position of these aforementioned countries. In view of traditional International Relations theories Turkey, on the one hand, was expected to focus on its internal problems; Germany, on the other hand, was foreseen to pursue an active foreign policy thanks to the new dynamism acquired by reunification. However, what happened in the case of Bosnia was, in fact, the reverse. The main argument of this study is that one of the main factors shaping the foreign policies of Ankara and Berlin toward Bosnia was the ultimate intention to maintain their former state identities in the new era.
Topic:: Foreign Policy and War
Political Geography:: Bosnia, Turkey, and Germany

438. Full Issue - Volume 1, Issue 1

Publication Date:: 12-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: CTC Sentinel
Institution:: The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
Abstract:: THE COMBATING TERRORISM CENTER at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is privileged to present the CTC Sentinel, a new monthly online journal devoted to understanding and confronting contemporary threats posed by terrorism, insurgency and other forms of political violence. The CTC Sentinel draws from the Center's network of scholars and practitioners dedicated to the study of terrorism and counter-terrorism to provide the most well-informed forum for the analysis of these most pressing security challenges facing the United States and its allies.
Topic:: Terrorism and War
Political Geography:: United States

439. Analytical Perspectives on the War in Lebanon

Author:: Volker Perthes
Publication Date:: 03-2007
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: The International Spectator
Institution:: Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:: The summer 2006 war in Lebanon can be perceived through at least five different frames of reference. The US administration saw the war in Lebanon as a local manifestation of the global war on terror. According to this framework, Hezbollah is an Al Qaeda-type enemy, not a national group with a local agenda and constituency; bargaining with Hezbollah is not possible. This point of view makes fighting global terror more difficult and jeopardises the search for stability and peace in the region. Many Israeli and European politicians saw the war as a confrontation between radical Islam and a modern Israeli state, a clash of cultures between Islamic fundamentalists and Western civilisation. This frame of reference, however, fails to recognise the fault line within the Muslim world itself, between those who want to integrate their societies into a globalised world and those who do not. The conflict in Lebanon can also be interpreted as a consequence of the weakening of a state, a framework which underlines the need to strengthen Arab institutions, or as an asymmetrical war between an armed nation state and a guerrilla movement. Finally, the war in Lebanon can be seen as a conflict over power, land, resources and sovereignty - the classic realist perspective. If the international community fails to work toward a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East, another framework will gain strength in the Arab world: one that interprets events according to a theory of non-negotiable conflicts between Western imperialism and radical Islamic resistance.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: United States, Europe, Middle East, Israel, Arabia, and Lebanon

440. The combatants of “certain death”. The sense of sacrifice seen through the “Great War”

Author:: François Lagrange
Publication Date:: 09-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Cultures & Conflits
Institution:: Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:: Testimonies and historical analyses often identify the experiences of the combatants of the “Great War” to sacrifices. Nothing links them, at first looks, to the defined features of voluntary death (kamikazes or suicide-bombings). However some elements allow, at the margins, for example in the frame of the French experiences of WWI, to see common traits between the discourses on self-sacrifice on the one hand, voluntary death on the other. An analysis of the conceptions of military authors before 1914 allows reconstructing their radical vision of self-sacrifice in war leading to a valorisation of “certain death”. A complementary investigation reveals, at the beginning of the “Great War”, some cases of “certain death”. Although limited in number, these borderline-cases are significant. They shall not be overlooked in the comparative approach of the different senses and practices of self-sacrifice.
Topic:: War and History
Political Geography:: Europe

441. War and the Liberal Democratic State

Author:: Vivienne Jabri
Publication Date:: 01-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Cultures & Conflits
Institution:: Cultures & Conflits
Abstract:: En matière de politique internationale, la guerre est une technologie de contrôle. Tandis que ses manifestations violentes comme l\'invasion et l\'occupation de l\'Irak sont directement ressenties par les populations visées, les pratiques qui y sont associées ainsi que ladite « guerre au terrorisme » ont des effets d\'une portée mondiale. Cet article offre une lecture de la guerre globale comme forme de contrôle propre à cette modernité tardive. Il montre que les pratiques qui constituent la guerre globale sont à comprendre en termes de matrice, ceci comprenant les Etats et leurs bureaucraties ainsi que des agents non étatiques, visant Etats, communautés particulières et individus. La matrice de la guerre opère au nom de l\'humanité, mais c\'est finalement cette même humanité qui en vient à devenir le sujet de ces opérations de contrôle global. Comme le montre l\'article, les conséquences sont monumentales pour le gouvernement, l\'examen démocratique et les espaces possibles de dissidence.
Topic:: Government and War
Political Geography:: Iraq

442. Les Assurances sociales: Une contribution à la modernisation de la société française dans l'entre-deux-guerres?

Author:: Bruno Valat
Publication Date:: 03-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: The 1930 law creating social insurance was the Third Republic's great achievement in the social arena. However, the historiography of contemporary France contains barely a trace of this achievement. Victim of the regime's discredit as well as of the lack of any reformist political efforts in its favor, social insurance of the 1930s has also suffered by comparison to later achievements, particularly the creation of Social Security in 1945. However, if we study social insurance in its own historical context––and not in reference to the postwar period––, it can constitute an original source for the study of the modernization of French society. This article proposes three approaches: social insurance constitutes a vector for the acculturation of the working class to retirement and to the medicalization of health, contributing to the history of working class uses and representations of consumption and social rights. On a more institutional level, the experience of social insurance reveals the first legal experiments with cogestion involving employers, workers, and insurance organizations. Finally, a prosopographical study of the militant trajectories linked to social insurance could contribute to the history of the working-class movement between 1930 and the end of the Thirty Glorious Years: is there a "social insurance generation" within French syndicalism?
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: France

443. Artistic Community and Urban Development in 1920s Montmartre

Author:: Jeffrey H. Jackson
Publication Date:: 06-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: By the 1920s, the physical transformation in the urban space of Montmartre led two groups of artists to "secede" from the city of Paris, at least in spirit. Calling themselves the Commune Libre de Montmartre and the République de Montmartre, these painters, illustrators, poets, writers, and musicians articulated a distinctive community-based identity centered around mutual aid, sociability, and limiting urban development. They also reached out to the poor of the neighborhood through charity efforts, thus linking their fates with those of other area residents. Through these organizations, neighborhood artists came to terms with the changes taking place in the city of Paris in the 1920s by navigating between nostalgia and modernism. They sought to keep alive an older vision of the artists' Montmartre while adapting to the new conditions of the post-World War I city.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Paris and France

444. Born in 1925

Author:: Alan B. Spitzer
Publication Date:: 06-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: The May 1948 issue of Les Temps Modernes published three short essays entitled "Nés en 1925." The young authors were Jean-François Lyotard, who was to become a philosopher of international distinction; Paul Viallaneix, his generation's outstanding Michelet scholar; and Pierre Gripari, the author of a wide variety of works including popular books for children. They had been comrades (along with the future sociologist Alain Touraine), at the khâgne of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, which prepared a student elite to compete for entrance into the École normale supérieure. Their contributions reflected the experience of an intense traditional education under the pressures of war and the Occupation. Their subsequent careers reveal the relation of the permanent stamp of a common formation and the individual experience of particular circumstances.
Topic:: War

445. Matisse at Vence: An Epilogue to Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Search for Sacred Art

Author:: Kenneth E. Silver
Publication Date:: 06-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Silverman's intent is to emphasize the "critical role of religion in the development of modernism." As an addendum to that pursuit, it should be pointed out that, well into the twentieth century, religion remained crucial to artistic innovation and development (and still is). We now recognize how important apocalyptic imagery was to Wasily Kandinsky's abstraction. In the wake of the Second World War, and French occupation by the Germans, religion made a powerful reappearance in the art of the avant-garde. Henri Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary at Vence is one of the great works of this period; it is worth briefly examining the ways in which Matisse understood the intersection between modern art and his reengagement with Catholicism.
Topic:: Development and War
Political Geography:: Germany

446. The Geneva Conventions and New Wars

Author:: Renee De Nevers
Publication Date:: 09-2006
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Political Science Quarterly
Institution:: Academy of Political Science
Abstract:: RENÉE DE NEVERS explores how ‘‘new’’ wars—ranging from civil wars to asymmetric war—and new warriors, including warlords, private security companies, and children, fit within the Geneva Conventions. Although the nature of warfare and warriors has changed from the time the Conventions were adopted in 1949, she challenges the view that the Conventions should be abandoned. Rather, she argues, the Conventions should be revitalized to address a broader spectrum of war, because this will generate greater international support for U.S. efforts to combat terrorism.
Topic:: Terrorism, War, and Geneva Convention
Political Geography:: Global Focus and United States of America

447. Turkish-Tajik Relations After the Independence

Author:: Pinar Akçali
Publication Date:: 03-2005
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:: This article aims to analyze the relations between Turkey and Tajikistan in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The relations between these two countries remained rather limited in the period of 1991-1994 because Tajikistan was not Turkic, faced negative economic conditions, went through a civil war, and had closer ties with Iran and Russia. Between 1995 and 2003, however, these relations improved as Turkey better realized the fact that Tajikistan was both an inseparable part of Central Asian geography and critical for regional stability. Furthermore, in this period, Tajik Civil War ended with an important political reconciliation. It is concluded that although there has been a relative improvement in Turkish-Tajik relations since Tajikistan's independence, it has not yet reached to a satisfactory level.
Topic:: International Relations, Economics, and War
Political Geography:: Russia, Iran, Central Asia, Turkey, Asia, and Tajikistan

448. The Middle East and Religious Fundamentalism as a Source of Identity-Based Conflicts

Author:: Dan Tschirgi
Publication Date:: 12-2005
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:: An understanding of religious fundamentalism as a source of conflict in the Middle East is significantly furthered by examining "asymmetrical threats" in other areas. This article suggests that a particular form of asymmetrical conflict ("Marginalized Violent Internal Conflict"[MVIC]) was proliferating well before September 11, 2001, and that examples appeared in Mexico and Egypt, as well as possibly in Nigeria, Chile and the Philippines. Arguing that the "War on Terrorism" may be the result of MVIC having been raised to the level of Marginalized Violent International Conflict, the author examines policy implications raised by the goal of global security.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Middle East, Philippines, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, and Chile

449. Are Events in Iraq after the Occupation an Ordinary Security Problem?

Author:: Nihat Ali Özcan
Publication Date:: 03-2004
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:: The US carried out the Iraqi occupation quickly, easily and with few casualties. It put an end to the security bureaucracy in the name of building new Iraq after the war. After a short while it faced unexpected resistance in the regions where Sunnite Arabs live. Insurgents have proved by their choice of targets and use of methods that they have a long-term and systematical resistance strategy. The insurgents could organize quickly because of effective tribal order, power of old security bureaucracy which kept its integrity after the war and refusal of foreign occupation. Insurgents want to control the public in order to get rid of weakness. Therefore, the keypoint of contention is who will control the public. While insurgents commonly use "terror" and "violence", occupiers try on the one hand to make insurgents ineffective, on the other, to win the "heart and brain" of the public. Security questions may spread to whole country in Iraq where there are ethnic and religious struggles. Iraqi Shiites may be involved in the conflict. Kurdish claims on Kirkuk may bring an ethnic conflict to the agenda. If the US administration can't provide stability in Iraq as soon as possible, Iraq may drift into a civil war.
Topic:: Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:: United States, Iraq, Arabia, and Kirkuk

450. The Just War Concept: From Antiquity to Present

Author:: Fulya A. Ereker
Publication Date:: 09-2004
Content Type:: Journal Article
Institution:: Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:: When taken as an aspect of "thinking on war", the concept of "just war" can be defined to include the ideas and practices that demonstrate when it could be justifiable to conduct a "war" and that aim at limiting the use of force even when it is deemed a just war. The concept of just war is a product of various cultural sources that have developed for centuries especially in the Western world. This study examines the historical development of the concept of "just war" and attempts to demonstrate the place that the tradition reached today. With this purpose in mind, the study, first of all, tries to explain the terms of "jus ad bellum" and "jus in bello" that together draw the conceptual framework of the theory of war and at the same time constitute the two different dimensions of the theory. Historical development of the concept is examined in sequential phrases that correspond to philosophical contributions to the tradition. The classification is based on the historical development of the West, because the concept itself is an element of the Western culture and tradition.
Topic:: Development, War, and Culture

451. Too Good to be Legal? Network Centric Warfare and International Law

Author:: Erik Dahl
Publication Date:: 05-2004
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: Journal of Public and International Affairs (JPIA)
Institution:: School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:: America’s military today faces new challenges that appear resistant to conventional solutions. The concept known as Network Centric Warfare (NCW) promises to use speed, precision, and information technology to win conflicts more quickly with minimal force. But many of the advantages that look beguiling to a commander can create problems for a military that focuses too much on speed and effects, at the expense of deliberation and law. This article argues that both the U.S. military and the American public will lose if new tools and technologies make war seem too easy. It calls for a reassessment of NCW in light of international law and offers recommendations to help guide that effort.
Topic:: International Law, Science and Technology, War, and Military
Political Geography:: North America and United States of America

452. American Francophobia Takes a New Turn

Author:: Justin Vaïsse
Publication Date:: 06-2003
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Francophobia, a set of stereotypes, insults, and ready-made judgments designed to prove one's patriotism and score political points, is based primarily in diplomatic and conservative circles. The war in Iraq was a moment of special mobilization of Francophobia by the administration and a large share of the media, and may prove to have been a crystallizing moment for the discourse.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Iraq and America

453. Remembering the Battle of Paris: 17th October 1961 in French and Algerian Memory

Author:: Joshua Cole
Publication Date:: 09-2003
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: In October 1961, an as yet undetermined number of Algerian protesters were killed by the police in Paris while demonstrating for Algerian independence. In the last two decades, these killings have become the focal point of a public controversy in France, as questions about the memory of the Algerian war converged with debates about immigration and citizenship in the 1980s and 1990s and with the willingness of the French state to confront the crimes committed during the last phase of decolonization between 1945 and 1962. Most commentaries have emphasized the connections of this debate with an earlier bout of French soul-searching over the question of the Vichy government's collaboration with Germany during World War II. This connection seemed all the more relevant when the man who was the prefect of police in Paris in 1961, Maurice Papon, was accused and eventually convicted of assisting in the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux in 1942-1944. This article argues that the public attention to the connections between Maurice Papon and the Holocaust have obscured the extent to which the debate in France about October 1961 has been driven by developments in Algerian politics in the last four decades. The extent to which historical accounts of the events of October 1961 are shaped by very contemporary political concerns presents particular challenges to the historian, who must find a way of retelling the story without merely reproducing the ideological conflict that produced the violence in the first place.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Paris, France, Germany, and Algeria

454. Easternization Meets Westernization: Patriotic Youth Organizations in French Indochina during World War II

Author:: Anne Raffin
Publication Date:: 06-2002
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Although colonizers generally repressed emergent national movements as potential vehicles of national liberation, the French encouraged patriotic mobilizations in Indochina in the early 1940s as a way to counteract Thai irredentists, Vietnamese revolutionaries, and Japanese occupiers and their claims of "Asia for Asians." Here, colonial authorities sought to build allegiance to the empire by "patriotizing" youth attitudes through sports activities and youth corps. Participation in such youth organizations mushroomed in Indochina between 1940 and 1945, gaining over a million members in that short span.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: Japan, China, and Asia

455. War and Liberation: Histories from Below

Author:: Steven Zdatny
Publication Date:: 03-2001
Content Type:: Journal Article
Journal:: French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:: Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:: Little remains today of the so-called Resistencialist Myth, the notion that France was a nation of resisters, save for a handful of treasonous collabos. It was a useful and ingenious fiction. Maybe it spared the country civil war. It certainly bought France selfesteem and saved civil society for the Fourth Republic and the resurrection of liberal democracy. But it's hard to imagine anyone believes it anymore, if anybody truly believed it then. We know that these sorts of political legends do not die all at once; they fall apart in stages, like Francisco Franco. In this case, the stages are well known. In the late 1960s, Marcel Ophuls's The Sorrow and the Pity offered a countermyth of Collaborationist France. A few years later, Robert Paxton's careful, irrefutable scholarship ravaged the legend of la France résistante and re-ignited interest in the real history of Vichy. His Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order depended on research in German occupation sources because French documents were closed. But actors die, fifty-year rules expire, politicians and archivists tack with the wind, all of which has prodded French historians to an unprecedented scrutiny of the nation's experience of war and occupation.
Topic:: War
Political Geography:: France

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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS