The Dublin School of International Relations

Massacres and Genocide

2007-10-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives has voted to recognise the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. The Turkish government (and, in all likelihood, Turkish people generally) are very annoyed. There are suggestions that this might have terrible repercussions regarding US efforts to pacify Iraq.

People who deny the extermination of Jewish people by the Nazis in the Second World War typically say that there was no targetted programme of mass killing and that the numbers who died are grossly exaggerated and no higher than might be expected in a continent at war. Armenian genocide denial is somewhat similar. In fairness to the Turks, my understanding is that they do not deny that very large numbers of Armenians were killed by agents of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, or that many of these victims may well have been non-combatants. I don't know if they accept the widely accepted estimate of 1,500,000 victims, but I think they agree that the numbers were very large. The Turks also talk, however, about Turkish and people of other ethnicities (e.g. Kurds) killed by Armenian rebels and so on, though I doubt they seriously claim that massacares of Turks and Kurds by Armenians were in the same order of magnitude as killings of Armenians by Kurds and Turks.

My understanding of the Turkish position is that they take exception to the word genocide, with its connotations of systematic and deliberate extermination. They point out that many Armenians in areas of the Ottoman Empire other than Eastern Anatolia (e.g. Istanbul itself) were not exterminated en masse (though they were subject to considerable persecution), suggesting that the regime was not hell-bent on the total elimination of Armenians. Analysis of the history of the first world war does, however, make plain that the Turkish leadership under Enver Pasha were determined to expel all Armenians from Eastern Anatolia, and were not too bothered if very few of the expellees failed to arrive at their expulsion destination if not actively determined to exterminate them all. I don't know if there is documentary evidence to prove a centrally directed campaign of mass murder, but the balance of probability certainly supports the idea that such was the regime's goal.

My own feeling is that genocide has become an overly emotive word, something like terrorism in that it is thrown at whoever you don't like this week. I don't think, however, that the Turkish government is doing itself any favours on this issue; their endless carping on definitions makes them look like a shifty plea bargainers. That said, pressurising Turkey on this point does not obviously seem to serve any purpose other than to strengthen the country's reactionary nutjobs, whose current project is to invade Iraqi Kurdistan.

The BBC has an interesting article on the history of Turkish attitudes to the Armenian mass killings: Turkey's Armenian dilemma

crossposted to Hunting Monsters

Rocket State

2007-07-30T16:22:00.001-07:00

This is essential viewing, especially after reading Seamus' post from last October. Hilarious stuff... A great little movie.

IR-IKU SINIFI

2007-07-30T15:02:00.001-07:00

Some footage of our fellow international relations students in Turkey. A few of the folks in the class that graduated in 2005 made a video. Here is one of their descriptions:

"In 2005, I and my class were graduating from the university. I made two VCDs as a memory of university days and dealed them to my friends... I won't upload them to YouTube. However, I just wanted to make you watch the intro of the discs, because it is a summary of our university days and everybody in our class, except 2 persons which don't want to be shown in YouTube amd many lecturers of us, can be seen in this video. The music is composed by Melih Kibar and first used in the most famous Turkish comedy movie "Hababam Class"... Our class was called "IR-IKU Class 2000/2005"... IR means "International Relations", IKU means "Istanbul Kultur University"... I hope you'll enjoy this video..."

Class photos

2007-07-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

In the distant past (October 2006), when our thesis was a vaguely threatening concept that was lurking somewhere in the future, some of us from the DCU part-time IR class of 2005-07 went for a meal in Da Pino. It has taken nine months for these photos to be born into cyberspace, but at long last I am posting a random selection of Sasha's photos from that night. Some people seemed to have been more camera shy than others. Apologies if anyone doesn't like how their photos came out - I certainly look ridiculous in the one with me in it...

Names are L-R or clockwise. Please feel free to post witty captions as comments...

A full table of students

Declan & Liz

Liz, Eva, Ian, & Kealan

Sasha, Liana, & Eva

Liana, Liz, Sasha, Declan, Lorna, & Paul

Eoin & Tom

Kealan, Ian, Eva, Eoin, Liana, & Tom

Some light reading on political Islam

2007-07-01T13:39:00.001-07:00

I'm about halfway through Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East by Professor Fred Halliday. Halliday is originally from Dublin, and lectures about the Middle East in the London School of Economics. I usually read his column on Open Democracy, which gives a great analysis of events in the region.

Mecca

Political Islam is the use of Islam in the realm of politics. Actors who subscribe to this philosophy are known as Islamists. As well believing that Islam should be the basis of a political system, Islamists use the Muslim faith as a tool of popular mobilisation, and as the means to express political and social ideas in a religious language.

One of the academic questions that often comes up when studying political Islam is that of civilisational values. There are those who believe that we are currently in a situation where there is a 'Clash of Civilisations' between Islam and the West. Halliday is among those who suggest that the rise of political Islam in the Middle East and North Africa is linked to Western policies in the region, rather than some kind of essential Islamic values. He identifies political Islam as being essentially problem-driven in nature. According to this understanding, Islamist actors are responding to perceived social and political problems in the region, rather than some kind of hatred for the West.

Because Islamists are attempting to provide solutions to problems, Halliday believes that "the issue of development... is a useful starting point" (p. 128) in understanding political Islam. Halliday agrees that the region is faced with significant social problems. However, he doesn't have much faith in the potential for the Islamists to come up with effective solutions, making reference to "empty ideas about 'Islamic economics'". I do not fully agree with his dismissal of the credibility of political Islam. It seems to me to be too soon to tell whether the Islamists would provide any real answers if they were able to gain power.

Ayatollah Khomeini

One of the strengths of Halliday's analysis is his emphasis on the variety of political Islam. He demonstrates that it is the specific context of the political situation in different countries that explains the actions of Islamist actors. Therefore, for example, the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, can only be understood in the context of the Israeli occupation and the realities of life in Palestine. And the course taken by the Iranian revolution was influenced by the conditions during the Pahlavi dynasty. Thus political Islam should be understood as the result of a particular social and political context, and cannot be explained by reference only to qualities inherent within the Islamic religion.

One of Halliday's main points in the book is that the Middle East does NOT need to be studied using some unique category of explanation. It should be possible to study the region using the same analytical tools you would use to study any other area of the world. Halliday rejects the view that the only categories that can be used to describe Muslim societies are categories that are specific to the region; for example, that categories such as Marxism or Weberian sociology should be rejected in favour of authentic, local, often Islamic concepts.

Halliday can speak some Persian and Arabic and has a direct knowledge of the region. His particular area of expertise is Iran, and he devotes an entire chapter of the book to the Iranian revolution. I'd highly recommend this section to anyone with an interest in Iran. He has also met with Hizbollah's senior political strategist Sheikh Naim Qassem in Beirut.

Madame Lévy – an inquiry

2007-05-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Those of us who took the course in Political Islam will have witnessed an interesting scholarly debate, concerning the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, or more particularly his wife and the nature of her mode of employment. Opinion is divided on whether Ms Arielle Dombasle could be best characterised as an actress or a strip-tease artist. Obviously, these are not exclusive categories, and either role could have elements of the other, but scholars are divided on which of the two should be considered her primary occupation. A number of papers have been issued on the subject.

I have carried out certain investigations of my own in the area. The Internet Movie Database, a well-known resource for information on films and people who appear in them, reports that Ms Dombasle has appeared in several highly regarded films, including Flagrant Désir, Les Fruits de la Passion, and Try This One For Size, as well as television dramas including Lace, Sins, and Miami Vice.

I also consulted the entry for Ms Dombasle in Wikipedia, the internet encyclodaedia. Here she is described as a singer and actress. There is no mention here of her having worked in burlesque, suggesting that any strip-tease activity in which she may have engaged was in the distant past and marginal to her main areas of aesthetic endeavour.

Close attention to source material suggests that reports of Ms Dombasle being employed in strip-tease may simply be the result of an erroneous reading of available documentation. Wikipedia reports that Bernard-Henri Lévy described her as having the looks of "a Crazy Horse dancing girl". Le Crazy Horse de Paris is a famous nude cabaret in Paris. It is easy to see how a careless reading of this source could lead to one thinking that it described Ms Dombasle as being such a dancing girl, rather than looking like one.

It appears therefore that the most correct position is that Ms Dombasle is indeed an actress and singer, and that any suggestion of her being employed in the business of clothes removal is based on a misreading of the documentary evidence.

Or so I thought. Further inquiries have revealed that earlier this year Ms Dombasle took part in a nude performance in Le Crazy Horse, promoting her latest record, C'est si bon. Or so reports this French language news source: Arielle Dombasle invente le récital érotique au Crazy Horse It appears, therefore, to be the case that, although Ms Dombasle is primarily an actress and singer, she is not averse to occasional participation in burlesque stage shows.

The Organisation of African Unity

2007-03-03T20:18:00.001-08:00

The attached video from July 1964 was recorded at the second meeting of the Organization of African Unity. This was the precursor of the African Union. It was formed to bring about joint action by independent African governments. In the video, Malcolm X talks about his contribution to the Cairo conference.

As you can see, I have discovered YouTube....

Some troubles along African borders

2007-02-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Nation of Islam, which once was the religious organisation of charismatic African American leader Malcolm X, has hosted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir at a conference in Detroit. Bashir identified his government as 'Africans' despite the fact that government agents in Darfur have been involved in a war seen as Arab versus African, with the government firmly on the Arab side. For an alternative Islamic view of the conflict, an American Muslim blogger has published an excellent analysis from the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA). The government agents, accurately described by the MANA as a "paramilitary proxy", are known as the 'Janjaweed', and they are acting illegally. Many villages have been destroyed, locals have been killed and refugees have gone over the border into Chad.

Sudanese president Bashir rejected the deployment of a UN force in Darfur. The Sudanese government has recently been involved in a civil war in the South, and is guilty of human rights violations in the Nuba mountains region. There is also a significant Islamist movement in northern Sudan. As can be seen from the map, Sudan is another African state with very straight lines as its borders. This is because the borders were created by somebody with a ruler in Europe, as a result of what is known as the Scramble for Africa. Sudan is Africa's largest state, and is bigger than western Europe.

The border with Chad over which so many refugees have moved is just one example of how the international system of states fails to capture the reality on the ground. Many people in the region have cross-border tribal identities. This is the situation in many states - one example of the inadequacy of state boundaries is the breakup of the entity of Yugoslavia. Also, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Banyamulenge tribe are the Congolese equivalent of the Rwandan Tutsi tribe, and the Banyarwandans are a Congolese Hutu tribe. These tribes in this Great Lakes region were divided by the creation of the current international borders. Rwanda appears to be tiny on the map in comparison to the massive DRC. Again, the DRC is larger than western Europe, which gives an idea of the scale of these problems.

There is a severe and ongoing humanitarian crisis in this region. According to the US State Department, Rwandan infant mortality rates are very high. This UN report cites the high numbers of people without food, clean water, and adequate sanitation in the eastern Katanga province of the DRC, and the failures of the international community to provide assistance. The lives of these people are marked by a high degree of vulnerability. This can be seen as a crisis of development. The region is also home to a range of wildlife, including many of the great apes. These apes are actually hunted by the hungry population. But as usual, these stories and lives fail to receive much international focus. They're not really tied into the transnational networks and structures of globalisation, I guess you could say...

The Islamists - our new friends?

2007-02-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

If you are taking the Political Islam course or generally interested in our southern and south-eastern neighbours then you might find the latest issue of the CEPS* European Neighbourhood Watch useful. It contains an interesting editorial on a developing dialogue between Islamist groups in the Middle East and North Africa on the one hand and European policy oriented NGOs and think tanks on the other. A number of things are interesting about this, notably the way the dialogue bypasses the governments of Europe and the Middle East, both of whom have decided that the only good Islamist is a severely repressed Islamist. But it is also interesting in its frankness about the fundamental existential questions that divide the European outlook from the Islamist one. The newsletter also contains a piece by Dr. Saad el-Deen al-Katany, the parliamentary leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in which he sets forth the need for dialogue between Islamists and the West.

If you are not interested in political Islam or the Middle East, the newsletter also reprints an interview with President Lukashenko of Belarus, one of world's great scary leaders.

You can download the newsletter here: CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch

*Centre for European Policy Studies

US client state in revolt?!!?

2006-11-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

Qatar is a small state in the Arabian peninsula. I don’t know much about it – it’s an oil reliant country, and is a monarchy under a fellow known as Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. I also had always thought of it as one of a number of US client states in the region.

So I was surprised to see on some 24 hour news station or other (it might have been the BBC) that Sheikh Hamad was speaking out on behalf of Hamas. He basically called the US on their hypocrisy. They’re supposedly involved in democratising the Middle East, but when Hamas were elected they were dismissed as terrorists, and the US refused have anything to do with them. This is despite the fact that the EU called the Palestinian elections ‘free and fair’.

Sheikh Hamad of Qatar

This didn’t fit with my image of Qatar. At first I thought it might have had something to do with the recent US elections, but I discovered that the same Sheikh had spoken out in favour of Hamas in February. Good for him, I say.

To me, it seems pretty straightforward that isolating Hamas, and denouncing them as terrorists, will only serve to radicalise Palestinians more and more. Despite Hamas’ rhetoric about demanding the destruction of Israel, the reality is that they would be willing to begin the process of moderating their position in negotiations with Israel. In any case, the so-called prisoners’ document implicitly recognised Israel (haven’t time now, but I plan to give more sources for this stuff later).

The very process of interacting with democratic structures will put more pressure on Hamas to moderate its position and become less hardline. So, if the US discourse about democracy was genuine, they would be encouraging Hamas’ engagement with democratic institutions. This goes for any state, including Iran. The US approach to Iran, in my view, is likely to either marginalise or radicalise any moderate actors within Iran, when they should be nurtured and encouraged.

As far as I’m concerned, all of the rhetoric about democracy in the Middle East is a red herring, and any claim by the US that their intentions are benevolent has no legitimacy. In any case, I’m interested in this Qatar-ish head of state’s stance on the issue. Maybe he’s a critical theorist...

International Relations - what is it good for?

2006-10-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

On the Helicopterview mailing list, one of the writers spoke of how he works in actual international relations. He talked of how he finds the work produced by International Relations academia to be next to useless in his work, and that he prefers to rely on the analyses of his colleagues and others from the "think-tank community". This has got me thinking about what the IR discipline is for. Should it be about producing knowledge and modes of understanding that would be useful to practitioners, or should it be doing something else? I lean towards the idea that the discipline's job is to produce knowledge for knowledge's sake, without any consideration of whether this knowledge would be of use to anyone working in the field. However, that would make the IR discipline some kind of self-referential game of little or no use to anyone outside it.

There is of course that famous quote by Karl Marx about other philosophers wanted to understand the world while he proposed to change it. That would push Marx away from the pure knowledge position and in favour of orienting the discipline towards the needs of practitioners. In his case, of course, the practitioners are not those from the think-tank or diplomatic communities, but revolutionary movements dedicated to the overthrow of the existing order.

What do you think International Relations is for?

Bolivia and the war on drugs

2006-10-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

In my Latin America module last semester, I wrote an essay about the drug trade. I used the theory of Critical Security Studies (CSS) to analyse the US pursuit of the ‘war on drugs’ in Bolivia.

CSS introduces the concept of ‘securitisation’, whereby issues that are not traditionally considered to be relevant to national security are linked to the security agenda. This has happened with the drug trade (as well as with other issues such as immigration). According to CSS theorist Richard Wyn Jones, securitisation can be used as a means to legitimise the use of certain actions which would be unacceptable in normal circumstances, such as “state-sanctioned killing, suspension of civil rights, confiscation of private resources, and so on“ (1).

Ronald Reagan

In April 1986, in a National Security Decision Directive, US president Ronald Reagan designated the trade in illicit drugs as a security threat to the US. This had a huge impact on many Latin American countries, for whom the policies of their powerful neighbour are an important consideration. A drug certification process was introduced for all states in Latin America. This meant that they had to agree to follow certain counter-drug policies in order to qualify for US financial aid.

These counter-drug policies involve a hardline attitude to the drug trade. They also involve a very militarised approach. Bolivia (along with Columbia and Peru) is one of the three main countries where the coca plant is grown – coca being the basic raw material used in making cocaine. This has meant that the US has taken a strong interest in coca growing in Bolivia.

Coca leaf and cocaine powder

Since the 1980s, there have been very close links between the Bolivian and US security forces. Under US pressure, the Bolivian authorities have pursued an uncompromising, militarised counter-drug policy. The US provides direct funding and training to Bolivia’s Special Drug Police Force (FELCN). In 1984, the US set up a paramilitary force known as the Leopards to eradicate coca production in Bolivia. At least up to 1997, US Drug Enforcement Agency personnel participated in military counter-drug operations on Bolivian soil. Very severe counter-drug legislation in Bolivia was introduced due to US economic pressure, and partly drafted by US legal experts.

These efforts have been mainly focussed on the Chapare region of Bolivia, in the Andean highlands, where most Bolivian coca is grown. The result of this military approach has been a pattern of human rights violations in the area. As of August 2004, there had been 33 deaths and 567 injuries to Chapare coca growers at the hands of the security forces. Arbitrary detention is routine, according to Human Rights Watch. Also, the strengthening of security forces has led to plenty of opportunities for military corruption. The FELCN are closely implicated in this regard (2). We can see how the securitisation of coca has impacted the peasant population of the Chapare.

The security-focussed approach involves a very narrow understanding of the drug trade. It fails to look at the larger context of coca growing in Bolivia. Coca cultivation is seen only as an illegal action which must be prevented, by force if necessary. However, there are social and economic reasons why coca is grown in the Chapare, and a military approach does not address these issues. In the Chapare, there is huge poverty. Most people grow coca because they don’t have many other options. The coca plant is suited to the bad soil and the climate of the area, can be harvested four times a year (more often than most crops), and the profit from sale of coca is much higher than other crops. Also, coca has a cultural significance – it is traditionally used in traditional medicine and religious ceremonies.

Furthermore, these farmers are small players in the wider cocaine trade. The sophisticated networks for marketing and distributing cocaine beyond Bolivia are not Bolivian-owned, and only a very small proportion of cocaine profits accrue to Bolivian coca growers. In 1986, a kilo of coca was worth $1,200 dollars at its source, $7,000 after processing in Colombia, $20,000 upon arrival in Miami, and had an eventual street value of $250,000 (3). It is clear that very little of this profit accrues to the peasant farmers of the Chapare.

Evo Morales

What is really needed is a wider approach that provides economic alternatives to coca. Since the 1980s, Bolivian governments have gone along with US prescriptions on counter-drug policy because of economic pressures. However, in December 2005, Bolivians elected a former coca grower named Evo Morales as president. With Morales in power, it seems that Bolivia is moving away from a simplistic military approach to coca growing, and is starting to look at the social and economic aspects of coca cultivation.

Morales has been advocating a policy of “coca si, cocaina no” (coca yes, cocaine no). He is trying to expand legal markets for coca, and developing production of legal coca products such as tea, biscuits, wine, and cosmetics such as soap and shampoo. Morales has given responsibility for counter drug policy to a former coca grower named Felipe Caceres, who has declared that the US strategy did not tackle “the poverty and the social and cultural aspects” of coca growing. This fits in with the CSS suggestion that issues which have been ‘securitised’ should be dealt with by being placed in a wider context, and by turning to more cooperative, non-military solutions. So there is some hope that the issue of coca in Bolivia will be widened beyond a simplistic focus on security. How successful this will be remains to be seen.

Notes:
1. Wyn Jones, Richard; Security, Strategy, and Critical Theory; 1999, p. 108
2. Ledebur, Kathryn; 'Bolivia: Clear Consequences'; in Coletta A Youngers and Eileen Rosin (eds.); Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The impact of US policy; 2005; p. 153
3. Bewley-Taylor, David; The United States and International Drug Control 1909-1997; 1999, p. 190

2006-10-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks for setting this blog up Paul! Hopefully we can share some ideas of how Global Politics is functioning at present and have some lively discussions as to what is going right/wrong.

So I suppose with the days that are in it I'll post a few words on North Korea. It was only a matter of time before the regime of Kim Jong-Il went for the jugular and tested a nuclear weapon. With international focus on the Iranian nuclear issue over the past year or so, the continued utterances of the DPRK in relation to how advanced they were on acquiring nuclear capability was understandable - the "don't forget about me/I'm over here!" scenario. Although many were not expecting this to happen coming so soon after the Sino-Japanese summit yesterday - to say that China is annoyed is a real understatement - it was a crisis waiting to happen. Of course these nuclear war games hide the real issue - that North Korean civilians are on the brink of starvation. It would seem that China would prefer to prop up the current regime rather than deal with millions of refugees flooding over its borders.

So the next few days will bring the Security Council together with further sanctions on the DPRK regime seeming inevitable. The most depressing thing is that the country is apparently in such a desperate situation that further sanctions will have little effect of influencing Kim Jong-Il, but will punish an already anguished population. Will the unfolding events represent another example of the ineffectiveness of the UNSC in dealing with International crises?

Let the IR blogging begin...

2006-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

This blog was set up in order to discuss the academic discipline of International Relations. It is for use by part-time MA students who are studying International Relations in Dublin City University from 2005-2007. It is intended to provide a forum for ideas and discussion.

All of us have willingly signed up for the course, and I for one find the subject matter fascinating. In our very first class this semester, mention was made of a ‘scholarly community’. I was thinking about ways to try to interact as a scholarly community of students, and I thought it might be a nice idea to set up a discussion blog where we could exchange ideas and understandings of the subjects of the course.

Last Friday, a few of us went out for a nice meal that Eva arranged for our class (thanks Eva!). At the meal and in the pub afterwards, I ran this idea about a blog by a few of my fellow students. Most of them were encouraging, and thought they might be interested in posting a few thoughts about things on a blog. So I decided just to go ahead and set one up!

I have often asked myself why I bothered signing up for a Masters at all (I've written about this on my own blog). One of the main things I’m interested in is getting into a dialogue with my fellow students about global politics, inequality, war, trade, and other IR stuff. Maybe a blog like this would be a good way to have this discussion? So now let’s see if there are any volunteers to contribute!!

Don’t all rush forward…