Showing papers in "Review of International Studies in 1999"

Civil society at the turn of the millenium: prospects for an alternative world order

Abstract: The meaning of ‘civil society’ has evolved considerably since its use in the context of the 18th century European Enlightenment. Then it signified the realm of private interests, in practice the realm of the bourgeoisie, distinct from the state. While one current of thought retains that meaning and its implications, others view civil society rather as the emancipatory activity of social forces distinct from both state and capital. Antonio Gramsci's thought embraced both meanings: civil society was the ground that sustained the hegemony of the bourgeoisie but also that on which an emancipatory counterhegemony could be constructed. Is civil society today in the latter sense, a surrogate for revolution that seems a remote possibility towards the attainment of an alternative social and world order? It is useful to test this proposition by examining the potential for civil society in different parts of the world.

The nature and sources of liberal international order

Abstract: Debates about the future of relations among the advanced industrial countries after the Cold War hinge on theories about the sources of international political order. Realism advances the most defined—and pessimistic—answers drawing on theories of anarchy, balance, and hegemony. But these theories are not able to explain the origins and continuing stability of relations among the United States and its European and Asian partners. This article develops a theory of liberal international order that captures its major structures, institutions, and practices. Distinctive features mark postwar liberal order—co-binding security institutions, penetrated American hegemony, semi-sovereign great powers, economic openness, and civic identity. It is these multifaceted and interlocking features of Western liberal order that give it a durability and significance.

Strategic culture as context: the first generation of theory strikes back

Abstract: ‘Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back’ takes the scholarly argument about the study, and meaning, of strategic culture to a new stage. Specifically, this article is a direct reply to recent criticisms of so-called first-generation theorists of strategic culture. The author reconsiders both the subject of strategic culture, and what he first wrote about it fifteen and more years ago. He finds that although there is noteworthy room for improvement in what he wrote then, the recent theorising by Alastair Iain Johnston, in particular, rests upon a misunderstanding of the nature, character, and ‘working’ of strategic culture. Of particular note is the insistence by Johnston on a separation of ideas from behaviour, for the dominant purpose of developing falsifiable theory. ‘Strategic Culture as Context,’ therefore, revisits in some detail questions of definition, with particular reference to the ideas-behaviour nexus. The article proceeds both to register arguments that should advance understanding of how strategic culture ‘works,’ and to suggest a better set of discriminators, different perspectives, for better consideration of evidence of strategic culture. Overall, the article suggests that strategic culture provides context for understanding, rather than explanatory causality for behaviour.

The CNN effect: can the news media drive foreign policy?

Abstract: During the 1980s the proliferation of new technologies transformed the potential of the news media to provide a constant flow of global real-time news. Tiananmen Square and the collapse of communism symbolised by the fall of the Berlin Wall became major media events communicated to Western audiences instantaneously via TV news media. By the end of the decade the question was being asked as to what extent this ‘media pervasiveness’ had impacted upon government – particularly the process of foreign policy making. The new technologies appeared to reduce the scope for calm deliberation over policy, forcing policy-makers to respond to whatever issue journalists focused on. This perception was in turn reinforced by the end of the bipolar order and what many viewed as the collapse of the old anti-communist consensus which – it was argued – had led to the creation of an ideological bond uniting policy makers and journalists. Released from the ‘prism of the Cold War’ journalists were, it was presumed, freer not just to cover the stories they wanted but to criticise US foreign policy as well. The phrase ‘CNN effect’ encapsulated the idea that real-time communications technology could provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to global events.

Constructivism within a positivist social science

Abstract: Constructivism in the study of world politics is little more than a decade old, yet in that short time it has risen to challenge realism and liberalism as a leading approach in international relations. Its ascent has been dramatic. One prominent theorist recently suggested that constructivism has now replaced Marxism as the main paradigmatic rival to realism and liberalism. While this particular judgment might be debated—other scholars may wish to defend the continued relevance of a revived Marxist or socialist approach, for example—the fact remains that constructivism has reshaped many core debates in international relations theory.

Globalization and national governance: antinomy or interdependence?

Abstract: ‘Regardless of how you define or measure it, globalization is real and its impact on state power is significant’, says the globalist. ‘But how do you know?’ replies the sceptic. In this opening interchange one sees the origin of a controversy that after almost a decade shows few signs of abating. Globalists continue to maintain that there are big, fin-de-siecle transformations under way in the world at large, which can be laid at the door of something called globalization. This new era—popularized as a ‘world without borders’ and symbolized by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall—ostensibly came into its own where the Cold War left off. Globalists of all shades see a new world order in the making, marked by the de-territorialization of economic and political affairs, the ascendance of highly mobile, transnational forms of capital, and the growth of global forms of governance. By the same token, globalization sceptics, scrutinizing very similar empirical terrain, continue to pose the same insistent question. The dispute between globalists and sceptics is not about the reality of change; it is about the nature and significance of the changes under way as well as the driving forces behind them. ‘There is something out there’, agree the sceptics, but it is not necessarily, or even primarily, responsible for what is going on ‘in here’. The changes that fundamentally interest globalists are usually less economic than political. That is to say that their efforts to analyse or demonstrate economic change—the extent to which national economies have become more interconnected through trade, production, finance, and the growing web of international rules and institutions—are often a prelude to the political project.

The Westfailure system

Abstract: From an international political economy perspective, the international political system of states claiming exclusive authority and the monopoly of legitimate violence within their territorial limits—the so[hyphen]called Westphalia system—is inseparable from the prevailing capitalist market economy which also first evolved in Europe Each was a necessary condition for the evolution of the other To prosper, production and trade required the security provided by the state To survive, the state required the economic growth, and the credit[hyphen]creating system of finance, provided by the economic system But the latter has now created three major problems that the political system, by its very nature, is incapable of solving First, there is the major failure to manage and control the financial system—witness the Asian turmoil of 1997 Second, there is the failure to act for the protection of the environment Third, there is a failure to preserve a socio[hyphen]economic balance between the rich and powerful and the poor and weak The Westfailure system is thus failing Capitalism, the Planet and global (and national) civil society

Sovereignty, survival and the Westphalian blind alley in International Relations

Abstract: That states are sovereign units interacting under conditions of anarchy has long been the core assumption of the discipline of International Relations. Operating largely with an anthropomorphic conceptualization of the state, 'statists' create a stunted ontology of the international system dominated by the concepts of state survival and an assumed state survival interest. By constituting sharp lines of demarcation between being and non-being, between 'life' and 'death', statists ignore a host of more subtle changes in the ontological status of states which are ill-treated by reference to 'survival'. This Westphalian ontology leads ultimately to a dead end, for such a definition rejects from the outset an ontology of overlapping political authorities in a single territory but at distinct scales which is characteristic not only of the present international system but of the so-called Westphalian era as well.

Clausewitz rules, OK? The future is the past—with GPS

Abstract: The confessions of a neoclassical realistIn 1972, Hedley Bull wrote that ‘the sources of facile optimism and narrow moralism never dry up, and the lessons of the “realists” have to be learnt afresh by every new generation.‘ He proceeded to claim, with undue emphasis, that ‘in terms of the academic study of international relations, the stream of thinking and writing that began with Niebuhr and Carr has long run its course.’ The scholarly problems with classical realist theory are indeed severe. However, it would be a most grievous error to consign such theory to the bin marked ‘yesterday's solutions for yesterday's problems.’ If the academic study of international relations can find little save period-piece interest in the ideas of the classical realists, that is more a comment upon the competence of scholarship today than upon any change in world conditions.

Ideology and the Cold War

Abstract: Western scholars have long disagreed about the role that ideology played in the Cold War. The release of crucial documentation from the former East-bloc archives has shed new light on this question, but no consensus is likely to emerge. Even if all the archives are eventually opened, the new evidence will not—and cannot—provide full vindication for either realism or an ideology-based approach. A key task for scholars will be to reexamine the broad and often unspoken assumptions on which specific US and Soviet policies were based.

Strategic cultures revisited: reply to Colin Gray

Abstract: As the old blues song goes, ‘if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all’. Same goes for scholarly attention. So I am grateful to Professor Gray for his article. Despite his frequent use of adjectives about my work which suggest a desperation to inoculate future generations of scholars against it, we actually agree on a great deal. We share a basic ontological understanding of international relations and security studies in particular. We agree that strategic cultures—which admittedly we do define very differently—are none the less critical explanations for the way different groups of people think and act when it comes to the use of force. We also agree that these strategic cultures are not epiphenomena of unitary states acting under anarchy and constrained by material power structures, but are independent of these structures, influenced perhaps by both domestic and international normative structures (though I am not sure Professor Gray accepts this latter possibility for reasons I will return to in a moment). I think we also agree that rigour is better than confusion. Indeed, Professor Gray notes that ‘from the perspective of methodological rigour, it is hard to fault’ my work.

IR and the state of nature: the cultural origins of a ruling ideology

Abstract: This article argues that the modern concept of the state of nature as the defining claim of IR theory was developed in the course of the intercultural/international encounter between the Spaniards and the Amerindian peoples after the discovery of America. The analysis of the Spanish debate at the time demonstrates that the concept of the state of nature was itself the product of a highly charged moral discourse. Its continuous and unreflected use in the discipline of International Relations, where it supposedly describes a precultural, presocial, premoral condition between states, therefore hides the cultural, social and moral meanings the concept carries with it and suppresses a normative discourse of International Relations past and present.

Beyond Westphalia? Capitalism after the ‘Fall’

Abstract: When the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989 and the Cold War ended, specialists in the field of international relations (IR) readily acknowledged that it was necessary to take stock and assess the historical significance of these events. Unsurprisingly, no agreement has been reached. For most realists, the events reflect no more than an important shift in the power structure of the international system. But for liberals, the forty years of Cold War are now depicted not as a struggle for power, but as an ideological battle between capitalism and communism from which capitalism has emerged triumphant. The significance of this development for the future of international relations is difficult to gauge. As a key concept, ‘capitalism’ has largely been the preserve of the Marxian fringe in IR. It did not resonate amongst most mainstream theorists in the field, whether realist or liberal. The concept was most familiar as a term of communist propaganda. It was avoided by many specialists during the Cold War era who failed to see how capitalism could promote an understanding of superpower relations. But with the end of the Cold War now linked to the triumph of capitalism, it is impossible for liberals, in particular, to discuss the future of the international system without some evaluation of the unfolding international role being played by capitalism.

Europe after the Cold War: interstate order or post-sovereign regional system?

Abstract: The changing structure of European order poses, for any student of international relations, some fundamental questions about the evolution of world politics.1 Concepts of European order and of the European state system are, after all, central to accepted ideas of international relations. Out of the series of conflicts and negotiations?religious wars, coalitions to resist first the Hapsburg and then the Bourbon attempt at European hegemony?developed ideas and practices which still structure the contemporary global state system: the equality of states; international law as regulating relations among sovereign and equal states; domestic sovereignty as exclusive, without external oversight of the rules of domestic order. The 'modern' state system, modern scholars now agree, did not spring fully-clothed from the Treaty of Westphalia at the close of the Thirty Years' War; it evolved through a succession of treaties and conferences, from 1555 to 1714. It remains acceptable, nevertheless, to describe the European state order as built around the Westphalian system.2 In the twentieth century, these rules have been modified but not replaced. The European state system?which was the international state system until almost a hundred years ago?has expanded into a global state system. The UN and other global institutions are based upon recognizably similar assumptions to those which governed the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European orders, modified at the margins to limit the exclusive nature of domestic sovereignty and to give some large states more say in some institutions. As this European system has extended across the globe, however, the now regional European order has mutated. Divided into spheres of influence between two hegemonic powers after 1945, its Western states?under a benevolent American hegemony?accepted shared institutions, and limits on their sovereignty, which have crept gradually closer to the central issues of national sovereignty as their economies

The Political Economy of 'quasi-statehood' and the demise of 19th century African politics

Abstract: This article challenges two prevailing views of the failure by African polities to attain sovereign statehood in the late 19th century by providing evidence from two case studies showing that many African polities were not 'quasi-states,' lacking the empirical political and economic capacity to join the international community of sovereign states. Nor were they unable to sustain or promote international commerce. Instead, when heightened international economic competition threatened the profits of European traders, European interests pressed for pro-expansionist policies and for conditions deemed necessary for the success of European commerce.

The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union

Abstract: The breakdown of the Soviet Union surprised most scholars of international relations, comparative politics, and Soviet politics. Existing explanations attribute the breakdown of the Soviet Union to the reformist leadership of Gorbachev, and/or to systemic factors. These explanations do not focus on the key contribution of the war in Afghanistan. This is surprising since many scholars view wars as key causal factors in empire breakdown and regime change. We argue that the war in Afghanistan was a key factor, though not the only cause, in the breakdown of the Soviet Union. The war impacted Soviet politics in four reinforcing ways: (1) Perception effects: it changed the perceptions of leaders about the efficacy of using the military to hold the empire together and to intervene in foreign countries; (2) Military effects: it discredited the Red Army, created cleavage between the party and the military, and demonstrated that the Red Army was not invincible, which emboldened the non Russian republics to push for independence; (3) Legitimacy effects: it provided non-Russians with a common cause to demand independence since they viewed this war as a Russian war fought by non Russians against Afghans; and (4) Participation effects: it created new forms of political participation, started to transform the press/media before glasnost, initiated the first shots of glasnost, and created a significant mass of war veterans (Afghansti) who formed new civil organizations weakening the political hegemony of the communist party.

Where is the Third World now

Abstract: As we enter the new millennium, the Third World, far from disappearing, is becoming global. The dynamic of economic driven globalization is resulting in the global reproduction of Third World problems. Growing inequality, risk and vulnerability characterize not simply the state system, but an emerging global social order. This is part of an historical process underway for five centuries: the expansion of capitalism across the globe. Technological developments speed up the process. The demise of the communist bloc and the associated rejection of ‘real existing socialism’ as a mode of economic organization have provided a specific additional fillip to the reconfiguration of the ‘Third World’. The 1980s, and more particularly the 1990s, have witnessed the mainstreaming of liberal economic ideology via the Washington consensus. This approach to development has been legitimated in several global conferences such as United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and the Copenhagen Social Summit. It has been applied practically through institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO). In its wake we have seen a deepening of existing inequalities between and within states, with a resulting tension—contradiction even—between the development targets agreed by the United Nations (UN), and the policies pursued by international organizations and governments to facilitate such results.

Masculinities, IR and the ‘gender variable’: a cost-benefit analysis for (sympathetic) gender sceptics

Abstract: While it is commonplace to argue that international relations reflects a ‘masculinist’ world of men, this article reverses the argument and asks whether international relations might also discipline men and help produce masculinities. In thinking through this question, the article provides an alternative route to understanding the feminist argument that the ‘gender variable’ cannot simply be added to mainstream analysis. By drawing attention to the epistemological and methodological problems which would arise even with empirically oriented research on the subject, the limitations of mainstream approaches to this hitherto largely neglected area of research are highlighted, and alternatives suggested.

Harold Innis and the Empire of Speed

Abstract: Increasingly, International Relations (IR) theorists are drawing inspiration from a broad range of theorists outside the discipline. One thinks of the introduction of Antonio Gramsci's writings to IR theorists by Robert Cox, for example, and the 'school' that has developed in its wake. Similarly, the works of Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, and J?rgen Habermas are all relatively familiar to most IR theorists not because of their writings on world politics per se, but because they were imported into the field by roving theorists. Many others of varying success could be cited as well. Such cross-disciplinary excursions are important because they inject vitality into a field that?in the opinion of some at least?is in need of rejuvenation in the face of contemporary changes. In this paper, I elaborate on the work of the Canadian communications theorist Harold Innis, situating his work within contemporary IR theory while underlining his historicism, holism, and attention to time space biases.

Know your Schmitt: a godfather of truth and the spectre of Nazism

Abstract: In a recent article in the Review of International Studies Hans-Karl Pichler argues that Hans Morgenthau's intellectual universe was saturated by ‘typically European philosophical problems’ which he transferred to an American political context He shows this by looking at how Morgenthau tried to overcome the value determinacy of social science, as pointed out by Weber, by grounding his political realist theory in a Schmittean understanding of the political, which defines war – the friend/enemy distinction – as the essence of the political and founds it anthropologically in the evil, dangerous nature of human beings

The remapping of the Americas

Abstract: Richard G. Lipsey and Patricio Meller (eds.), Western Hemisphere Trade Integration: A Canadian-Latin American Dialogue (London: Macmillan, 1997)Elizabeth Joyce and Carlos Malamud (eds.), Latin America and the Multinational Drug Trade (London: Macmillan, 1998)Barry Bosworth, Susan M. Collins and Nora Claudia Lustig (eds.), Coming Together? Mexico-United States Relations (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997)James F. Rochlin, Redefining Mexican ‘Security’: Society, State and Region under NAFTA (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997)Lawrence E. Harrison, The Pan-American Dream: Do Latin America's Cultural Values Discourage True Partnership with the United States and Canada? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997)Antonia Darder and Rodolfo D. Torres (eds.), The Latino Studies Reader: Culture, Economy, and Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)International studies of the Americas have been dominated for at least the last forty years by an orthodoxy which framed the field of study as constituting the relations of the United States with the governments of something called ‘Latin America and the Caribbean’ (hereafter LAC). Often, as it happens, the Caribbean part of that construction was largely excluded from vision, especially the non-Spanish-speaking parts of that region; Canada was ignored almost as often; and the United States, needless to say, was automatically viewed as central. In power politics terms, this was understandable enough. The US perceived itself as a hegemonic power and associated its credibility in the eyes of both its enemies and allies in all parts of the world with its capacity to maintain and demonstrate control of its own hemispheric community—its ‘backyard’. Yet what we can now see is that the politics of this recent past (defined essentially as the Cold War period) were distinctive, not typical, in the longer history of US interactions with the rest of the Americas.

The right to self-determination in international politics: six theories in search of a policy

Abstract: The principle of the self-determination of peoples is enshrined in the United Nations Charter and based on liberal and democratic values. However, the international community has, until recently, interpreted this principle very restrictively, so that it has amounted to little more than the right to be free from European colonialism. The collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, as well as persistent ethno-nationalist conflicts around the world, have provoked new thinking about the right of self-determination in political theory. This article reviews six theories, and identifies what they have in common and on what they differ. It draws some cautious policy conclusions from this analysis and, in doing so, seeks to clarify the role and limits of theory in international politics.

Theorising the international system: perspectives from Historical Sociology

Abstract: Recent interest in the work of Historical Sociologists has concentrated on their renewed interest in the state. There is considerable regard for the historical account of state formation and development produced by writers such as Mann, Skocpol and Tilly. Surprisingly there has been less attention paid to another feature of their writings—the locating of states in an inter-state context. This article examines the international context envisioned by four historical sociologists. It argues that, although these writers have been successful at historicising state formations, this powerful account has not been matched with a historical account of international relations. If this project is to move forward, a complementary historical account of international contexts, or global structures, is required.

Still the American Century

Abstract: At the inception of the twenty-first century—not to mention the next millennium—books on ‘the American Century’ proliferate monthly, if not daily. We now have The American Century Dictionary, The American Century Thesaurus, and even The American Century Cookbook; perhaps the American Century baseball cap or cologne is not far behind. With one or two exceptions, the authors celebrate the unipolar pre-eminence and comprehensive economic advantage that the United States now enjoys. Surveys of public opinion show that most people agree: the American wave appears to be surging just as the year 2000 beckons. Unemployment and inflation are both at twenty-year lows, sending economists (who say you can't get lows for both at the same time) back to the drawing board. The stock market roars past the magic 10,000 mark, and the monster federal budget deficit of a decade ago miraculously metamorphoses into a surplus that may soon reach upwards of $1 trillion. Meanwhile President William Jefferson Clinton, not long after a humiliating impeachment, is rated in 1999 as the best of all postwar presidents in conducting foreign policy (a dizzying ascent from eighth place in 1994), according to a nationwide poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. This surprising result might also, of course, bespeak inattention: when asked to name the two or three most important foreign policy issues facing the US, fully 21 per cent of the public couldn't think of one (they answered ‘don't know’), and a mere seven per cent thought foreign policy issues were important to the nation. But who cares, when all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds?

Mission Impossible? The IMF and the failure of the market transition in Russia

Abstract: Until the second half of the 1990s, Western commentary about the former Soviet Union and the new Russia basically divided into two camps. On the one side stood those who not only welcomed the end of the USSR but looked forward to the ‘brave new world’ they hoped would be built on the debris left behind by the old order. Having failed to anticipate the demise of Soviet communism,< the optimists now predicted a bright new capitalist future for Russia. With excellent access to those in power, they were clearly the most favoured group with Western governments in general and the American government in particular. Certainly, within the US foreign policy elite it was broadly assumed that successful reform in Russia and Russia's integration into the larger capitalist system, was both feasible and necessary. As Strobe Talbott, the architect of American strategy towards Russia, observed in the early days of the Clinton administration, reform in Russia was not just about Russia but the shape of the new international order waiting to be born in the wake of the Cold War. Others were always more sceptical.

The altered state and the state of nature—the French Revolution and international politics

Abstract: The case of the French Revolution supports the proposition that principles of political legitimacy which shape state identities are linked to domestic social structures, and help determine the resources states mobilize in international competition. To the degree that they are shared across states, legitimacy principles also shape international society. The enactment of a deviant principle of legitimacy by a major power will have systemic consequences because it undermines the existing rules of the game; it may have transformative effects if the efficacy of the new principle is demonstrated in competition. Closer attention should be paid to the complex manner in which new principles interact with existing rules of international society.

Conflict resolution after the Cold War: the case of Moldova

Abstract: This article considers some implications of the Moldovan conflict from 1991 to the present for thinking about International Relations (IR) and conflict theory, as well as more specifically about the complexities of the conflict itself. This encompasses an examination of the roles of key external actors, and particularly of the Russian Republic and of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as well as a subjective view of the role of the internal actors and their aims. The analysis is based on an on-going involvement in a ‘problem-solving’ exercise in the area.

Historiography and International Relations

Abstract: Stafano Guzzini, Realism in International Relations and International Political Economy: The Continuing Story of a Death Foretold, London and New York, Routledge, 1998Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1998The philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, cautioned many years ago that ‘A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost’. If this injunction is true, then there would appear to be very little hope for the study of international relations. Although there is considerable debate about who constitute the founding fathers – names as different as Thucydides, Grotius and Kant come to mind – without doubt, interest in the seminal thoughts about international relations of such figures has never been higher.

Forum: Transforming political community: a response to the critics

Abstract: My first task is to thank the editors for creating a forum in which four authors from very different branches of social and political theory discuss my recent book on the transformation of political community. I am no less indebted to the authors involved for their participation in this debate. I hope this short reply does justice to their insightful comments and searching criticisms.Randall L. Schweller is most sharply at odds with my position and I begin by responding to his criticisms. I then turn to the comments made by R. B. J. Walker and Jean Bethke Elshtain who subscribe to the critical project, broadly conceived, though not to my version of it. This essay ends with some responses to Norman Geras who shares my commitment to building on the Kantian and Marxian tradition but who has a rather different method of taking it further.

Forum: Really existing communities

Abstract: It seems almost churlish to criticize a book as well-intentioned and clearly argued as The Transformation of Political Community. There is much in the volume to admire and to endorse. But there are also problems—there always are—and I will move to address these shortly. First, however, I want to point to some of the book's undeniable strengths. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Linklater's argument is the manner in which he takes on board a number of the perduring vexations of political and moral theory and addresses these within the context of international relations. For too long political theory and ‘IR’ have occupied separate niches, as if these two enterprises had little to do with one another. The result of the separation has been an impoverishment of both realms. ‘IR’ could move along as if questions of war and peace, security, order, power, engagement, citizen and soldier were not inescapably political and ethical issues impossible to deal with adequately in a manner that models sophisticatedly but falls flat conceptually. Too many underlying presuppositions in such undertakings are not brought to the surface and dealt with as is painfully evident in rational choice accounts with their impoverished views of what makes human beings tick.