Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2010"

The Beijing Consensus: How China s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: A leading foreign policy expert tells the story of how China's non-confrontational strategy is reshaping the rules of the new world order In "The Beijing Consensus", Stefan Halper presents a coherent integration of both the economic and strategic sides of China-US relations In its efforts to influence the rest of the world-to create a new liberal and democratic order - the United States has used its military and economic might to force developing countries to aim toward democratic reform and transparency A fine strategy, when you're the only game in town The Chinese, Halper argues, have chosen to confront the United States only indirectly Instead of playing by America's rules, as did the Soviet Union, China has redefined the rules of the game China doles out money to dictators - with no strings attached They buy resources from Africa and South America - without forcing transparency or reform down oligarchs' throats In doing so, it's presenting the world's despots with a viable alternative to the so-called Washington Consensus China is showing the world how to have economic growth with an illiberal government At the same time, Halper argues, that its rapid economic growth has created massive fissures in Chinese society between the haves and the have-nots In order to maintain political control, the Chinese Communist Party has to sustain double-digit economic growth, which means that it must exploit and co-opt the rest of the world's resources Necessity lies at the heart of China's expansionist policies Without them, the Communist Party risks its own demise "The Beijing Consensus" will prove to be a vital book in understanding the increasingly complex relationship between the United States and China-and between China and the rest of the world

Geography and the production of space in nineteenth-century American literature

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction: scales of identification 1. Democratic expansionism, gothic geographies, and Charles Brockden Brown 2. Urban apartments, global cities: the enlargement of private space in Poe and James 3. Cultural orphans: domesticity, missionaries, and China from Stowe to Sui Sin Far 4. 'The Checkered Globe': cosmopolitan despair in the American Pacific 5. Literature and regional production Epilogue: scales of resistance.

No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776

Abstract: Dismantling the myths of United States isolationism and exceptionalism, No Higher Law is a sweeping history and analysis of American policy toward the Western Hemisphere and Latin America from independence to the present. From the nation's earliest days, argues Brian Loveman, U.S. leaders viewed and treated Latin America as a crucible in which to test foreign policy and from which to expand American global influence. Loveman demonstrates how the main doctrines and policies adopted for the Western Hemisphere were exported, with modifications, to other world regions as the United States pursued its self-defined global mission. No Higher Law reveals the interplay of domestic politics and international circumstances that shaped key American foreign policies from U.S. independence to the first decade of the twenty-first century. This revisionist view considers the impact of slavery, racism, ethnic cleansing against Native Americans, debates on immigration, trade and tariffs, the historical growth of the military-industrial complex, and political corruption as critical dimensions of American politics and foreign policy. Concluding with an epilogue on the Obama administration, Loveman weaves together the complex history of U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy to achieve a broader historical understanding of American expansionism, militarism, imperialism, and global ambitions as well as novel insights into the challenges facing American policymakers at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Instability and Expansionism: Why the Former No Longer Produces the Latter in US Foreign Policy

Abstract: Why is expansionism absent from the Obama foreign policy agenda? The question seems bizarre precisely because expansionism is so completely absent from US policy discussions. In the modern world, the lack of great-power expansionism in the international system may be overdetermined, but the single strongest deterrent against twenty-first-century expansionism is likely the US commitment to oppose it. This commitment, repeatedly confirmed both through military actions like the Gulf War and consistent diplomatic rhetoric, is rooted in the commitment of the US to reject expansionism in its own foreign policy. It is therefore not a stretch to say that much of the stability of the current international system is the result of the US decision to forgo expansionism in its own foreign policy, a decision that represented a 180° turn from the aggressive expansionism of early US foreign policy (despite Jefferson‘s words quoted above). Obviously, this decision cannot be explained by the US‘ own deterrent power, but neither can it be fully explained by any of the other major arguments concerning the current stability in the modern literature. This paper offers an answer to the question of why expansionism faded from US foreign policy after its heyday in the early 1800s.

From the frontier to german south-west africa: german colonialism, indians, and american westward expansion*

Abstract: This article argues that positive perceptions of American westward expansion played a major (and so far overlooked) role both for the domestic German debate about the necessity of overseas expansion and for concrete German colonial policies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During and after the uprising against colonial rule (1904–7) of the two main indigenous peoples, the Herero and the Nama, of German South-West Africa (Germany's only settler colony), colonial administrators actively researched the history of the American frontier and American Indian policies in order to learn how best to “handle” the colony's peoples. There exists a substantial literature on the allegedly exceptional enchantment of Germans with American Indians. Yet this article shows that negative views of Amerindians also influenced and shaped the opinions and actions of German colonizers. Because of its focus on the importance of the United States for German discussions about colonial expansion, this article also explores the role German liberals played in the German colonial project. Ultimately, the United States as a “model empire” was especially attractive for Germans with liberal and progressive political convictions. The westward advancement of the American frontier went hand in hand with a variety of policies towards Native Americans, including measures of expulsion and extinction. German liberals accepted American expansionism as normative and were therefore willing to advocate, or at least tolerate, similar policies in the German colonies.

America, Hitler and the UN: How the Allies Won World War II and Forged a Peace

Abstract: On 1 January 1942, Churchill and Roosevelt issued a 'Declaration by United Nations' with 24 other states. This marked the beginning of the UN in a real and tangible form. Yet today many people have forgotten that the UN was forged in the midst of the confusion and complexity of wartime. How did the armies of the United Nations co-operate in the final years of World War II to contain - and ultimately reverse - Nazi expansionism? And when and for what purpose did the UN undertake to tackle the international economic and social challenges, not only of warfare but of a post-war world transformed beyond reconition? Drawing on previously unknown material from the UN archives, Dan Plesch analyses responses at all levels of society, from high level political elites to grass roots level. Arguing that the Allied defeat of Nazism should properly be called a United Nations victory, Dan Plesch has pieced together the full story of how the UN intervened in surprising ways at a pivotal time in European history. America, Hitler and the UN is an important addition to the literature of World War II and essential reading for anyone with an interest in military or diplomatic history or contemporary international relations.

The Soviet experience in Afghanistan: lessons to be learned?

Abstract: This article examines the experience of the Soviet army's occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It draws heavily on the report of the Russian General Staff, which gives a unique insight into the Soviet–Afghan war by senior Russian officers, many of whom served in Afghanistan. The author then places this analysis in the broader geopolitical context of Soviet expansionism from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. And the author proceeds to ask: Did Afghanistan account for the demise of the USSR? Finally, the issue of whether there are parallels with the failure of the Soviet Union's invasion and the current problems facing the USA in Afghanistan is examined.

California's frontier: america's pacific expansion and the rise of an economic empire

Abstract: OF THE THESIS California’s Frontier: America’s Pacific Expansion and the Rise of an Economic Empire by Jacob L. Adams Masters of Arts in History San Diego State University, 2010 Californians recognized America’s overseas expansion during the Spanish-American War as an opportunity to expand the commercial power of their state. Consequently, Californians became divided over the means to achieve the commercial benefits of the Pacific Ocean. Territorial expansionists believed that the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippines were necessary to counter the influence of the European powers in Asia. Some wanted a colonial system, while others wanted to civilize the islanders and extend America’s Manifest Destiny. In contrast, commercial expansionists argued that a foreign policy of freetrade in Asia would achieve their goal without the danger of competing with the European powers for territories. Nevertheless, both sides united to help change the course of America’s twentieth century foreign policy. This thesis examines the opinions and influences California expansionists had on the Treaty of Paris. In January of 1899, the United States Senate debated the ratification of the treaty. Concurrently, the California State Legislature passed a joint resolution instructing its two U.S. Senators Stephen M. White and George C. Perkins–who both opposed territorial expansion–to vote for the ratification of the treaty. Although the vote total was close, the treaty passed by one vote over the two-thirds needed to ratify a treaty. That one vote came from Perkins, who reluctantly switched his vote in favor of the treaty because of the pressure within California. The treaty may not have been ratified if Perkins had not decided to switch.

The West and Manifest Destiny

Abstract: Westward expansion is central to American Studies for the very simple reason that the object of study (the United States) has been constituted by successive processes of westward migration and territorial expansion. At the same time, the rhetoric of American Studies as a discipline, in terms of both the vocabulary of American selfhood and of the US nation, has been grounded in migration histories. From the corporate expansionism of the 1630s, which Perry Miller fixed into the paradigm of "the Great Migration," American Studies has been characterized by disciplinary metaphors like Sacvan Bercovitch's powerful analyses of "the Puritan origins of the American self" (1975) and a foundational understanding of the US as formed by the Americanization of (European) migrants. In the wake of ground-breaking work by Ronald Takaki, Gary Okihiro, and others, Americanists have been encouraged to look not across the Atlantic but across the Pacific, from and to "a different shore," to borrow Takaki's phrase. Richard Drinnon's account of American conquest, Facing West (1980), begins in early seventeenth-century Massachusetts but ends in Indochina. In this essay, I begin by asking “where is the West?” before turning to the issue of how the study of the West has changed, from foundational work by scholars like Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, and R. W. B. Lewis, to the “new” West Studies which turns away from the understanding of the West as a process to focus more on the West as a place. "New" Western scholars address the specificities of experience of people living in the West, both the colonizers from the East and the Western colonized, particularly in relation to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The particular case of indigenous communities and their experience of American settler-colonial expansionism, with its ideological justification “Manifest Destiny,” brings my essay to a close.

War and Empire: The Expansion of Britain, 1790-1830

Abstract: Preface and Acknowledgements Maps Part One: War, empire and British identity Chapter 1: War and empire: the contested connection Chapter 2: Britain's militarism Part Two: The War against Republican France Chapter 3: Containing France in Europe, 1793-95 Chapter 4: The expanded contest, 1793-97 Chapter 5: The Irish rebellion, 1796-98 Chapter 6: Renewing alliances and positioning for peace, 1798-1801 Part 3: Military imperialism in India Chapter 7: IndiaMilitary efficiency and Mysore, 1790-92 Chapter 8: Imperial expansionism and Mysore, 1798-99 Chapter 9: Expansionism against the Marathas, 1803-05 Part 4: The War against Napoleon Chapter 10: The quest for objectives, 1803-08 Chapter 11: The Iberian Peninsular commitment, 1808-13 Chapter 12: Victory in Spain and France, 1813-14 Part 5: Britain's global reach Chapter 13: The war of 1812 Chapter 14: The Waterloo campaign: lessons learned? Chapter 15: Completing British paramountcy in India, 1814-19 Part 6 The impact of war Chapter 16: Instruments of power Chapter 17: Aristocracy and British military culture Chapter 18: Interventions overseas, 1820-1830 Chapter 19: Britain as a global power, 1815-30 Index

Living and working on the cusp of contradictions: consumerism, justice and closed discourses

Abstract: In this article Jo Phoenix argues that the struggles practitioners face to have the complex welfare needs of sexually exploited young people recognised are likely to continue into the future. The argument is made by examining three profound tensions shaping the context which both young people and practitioners inhabit. These tensions are between the, broadly, protectionist agenda of policy development on sexual exploitation and: firstly, socio-cultural changes in respect of consumption, sex and identities; secondly political changes and punitive youth justice system expansionism; and, finally, the closed and moralist rhetoric justifying recent policy changes. In the final analysis, young people and practitioners get caught in these contradictions in ways that foreclose critical examination of policy development and recognition of the complexities of the issues involved.

Parallel Tracks: American Transcontinentalism and the Specter of Canada

Abstract: Between 1840 and 1898, the United States and Canada reconfigured their geographic and demographic contours. In only the first few decades of this period, the United States added over one million square miles to its territory, gaining tens of thousands of new citizens through these annexations, while African-American men were, at least officially, granted citizenship and the franchise in the wake of the Civil War. In Canada, the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada were united with provinces as far away as British Columbia, and millions of British citizens became members of the new nation of Canada. My project explores the effects of these shifts on American national self-perception. While I analyze events and ideas in both the United States and Canada, the core of my argument is about the United States. Canadian expansion and unification was a continual backdrop to American attempts to dominate the North American continent, serving as both competition for continental domination and as a comparison for new U.S. policies and governmental forms.Through their acquisition and incorporation of the Far West, the United States and Canada transformed themselves into what I call transcontinental nations. I use this term to emphasize the significance of the acquisition of the Pacific Coast to the development of the nineteenth-century North American nation. A distinctly North American form, the transcontinental nation was created out of the geographic circumstances that led European settlement to begin on the Atlantic Ocean and offered access to the Pacific only by crossing a continent. At the same time, the transcontinental national form was not only geographically determined, but was also fuelled by the nationalistic desire for territorial expansion and international influence that could be gained by settling lands on the Pacific Coast combined with a determination to avoid previous examples of states built over such distances and with such imperialistic goals. Rather than presenting a conventional comparative study, my dissertation explores changing ideas about U.S. national identity through a focus on the similarities and differences between the development of the United States during the period from 1840 and 1898 and parallel events in other former British settler colonies, particularly Canada. The period between 1848 and 1898 is often seen as a gap in US expansionism, a hiatus between the Manifest Destiny of the early nineteenth century and the formal and informal imperialism of the twentieth. By looking at the parallel processes in the United States and other former British settler colonies, it becomes obvious that during these decades the expansionist energy had not dissipated, but had merely been refocused. The consolidation of transcontinental nations represented a shift in this energy from piecemeal territorial acquisition to concentrated national consolidation. Putting the United States in context with Canadian expansion allows me to avoid the pitfall of treating U.S. expansion as if it were exceptional and puts American territorial growth within the context of its origins in the first decades of British colonialism in North America. It also reflects the substantial parallels between the nineteenth-century transformation of the United States and other former and current settler colonies of the British Empire. Finally, comparing the United States with Canada and other British settler colonies allows me to sidestep an anachronistic consideration of United States expansion in the nineteenth century within the context of its eventual divergence from other nations in the twentieth.

Power, profit and prestige: A history of American imperial expansion (Pluto Press, 2010)

Abstract: On 5th October 2010, Philip S Golub spoke at IDEAS to launch his new book, ‘Power, Profit and Prestige: A History of American Expansionism’. Here he sets out the core rationale behind his argument for the emergence of an ‘imperial cosmology’ among American leaders.

Maritime Destiny as Manifest Destiny: American Commercial Expansionism and the Idea of the Indian

Abstract: Following the Revolution, the United States merchant marine and whaling fleet sent thousands of young American men into the world. Far outnumbering tourists, travelers, and missionaries, sailors represented the predominant face and voice of the fledgling nation abroad. A survey of the journals and correspondence they kept while laboring overseas provides ample evidence of how working men thought about the wider world and their own country’s place within it. And when seafarers rendered intercultural contact, they often depended, in part, upon the use of Indian comparatives derived from domestic popular culture. Frontier language and the discourses of civilization and savagery became one means by which American men comprehended the otherwise baffling novelty and diversity they encountered while abroad. In addition, expansionist rhetoric helped to legitimate violence against so-called “Indians” overseas, as well as authorize American intervention and commercial intrusion into underdeveloped environments and economies. As such, mariners—a large population of mobile Americans—provide a valuable entryway into current efforts to resituate the history of the early republic within a more global framework.

Memory and Forgetting on the National Periphery: Marseilles and the Regicide of 1934

Abstract: The assassination of the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander Ist by Croatian terrorists during a state visit to Marseilles on 9 October 1934 is commemorated by a modest plaque on the Canebiere and a little known monument outside the Prefecture. Although the histories of the period cite the event in passing, it is treated as a footnote in the political history of France and has been all but erased from the memory of the city. While there are good reasons for forgetting the episode – regicide does no favours for the reputation of a host nation or city and the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou was accidentally shot by the French police – the double killing had multiple ramifications for France's interior and foreign affairs during the rise of fascism in Europe. It advanced the career of future Vichy Prime Minister Pierre Laval, who replaced Barthou as Foreign Minister, while French efforts to contain the threat of German expansionism by forging alliances with the Central European powers died with Barthou; King Alexander Ist's successor moved Yugoslavia into the camp of the Axis powers. Geopolitically, the system of collective security forged at Versailles collapsed in the wake the assassination. The incident in Marseilles highlights political tensions in France in the troubled inter-war years leading up to the emergence of the Front Populaire. It reveals the memorial agencies of core and periphery engaged in a struggle over the rights to remembrance. Above all, it poses the problem of the preservation of peripheral and traumatic episodes in collective memory and suggests that political violence constitutes a social periphery of its own, contributing to Marseille's "mauvaise reputation" as the French capital's negative, meridional 'other'.

A ‘sentinel(s) of our liberties’: Archbishop John Hughes and Irish-American intellectual negotiation in the Civil War era

Abstract: The first Archbishop of New York City served his tenure at one of the classic political junctures in American history By the 840s, the culture teemed with contending voices, as the spheres of politics, religion, and ethnicity articulated powerful imperatives against a backdrop of Jacksonian expansionism, the impending darkness of sectionalism, and other key crosscurrents in American public life Growing threats to the security of the Union competed for attention with the onslaught of the Irish Famine influx in the major east coast cities, particularly in New York Within the burgeoning metropolis, Irish-born John Joseph Hughes rose to prominence as a leader who forcefully engaged with issues of Church and state, religion and ethnicity, and status and power in the expanding urban milieu That he achieved such prominent status by the 1840s is remarkable enough, in the first instance, but that he succeeded to national and international standing at a point when a slew of conflicting forces conspired against

The World Map and the world of Goethe's Weltliteratur

Abstract: This paper examines the meaning of 'World' in Goethe's concept of World-Literature. It argues that Goethe builds on a far-reaching geographical imagination that was taking careful account of the latest trends in European expansionism. This is evident in the works of many of his contemporaries, with whom he associated closely, and whose ideas he held in great admiration. It is also evident in his interest in cartography. The idea of World in World-Literature finds its way indirectly in to a number of major works, where it enters into dialogue with some of the most problematic aspects of European expansionism.

FDR as founding father of the transatlantic alliance: The ‘Roosevelt doctrine’ of January 1936

Abstract: While few historians would doubt Franklin D. Roosevelt's claim to be one of the founding fathers of the transatlantic alliance during the Second World War, there is much less agreement about his transatlantic credentials during the period of American isolationism in the 1930s. This article takes the view that FDR's transatlantic leadership can, in fact, be dated back to his first term as president, and argues that his actions during the Ethiopian crisis of 1935–1936 provide strong evidence of his early support for Britain and France in combating the expansionism of Germany, Italy, and Japan. In particular, his ‘state of the union’ message in January 1936 made clear his ideological commitment to cooperation with the European democracies and constituted a ‘Roosevelt doctrine’ that presaged his later wartime leadership of the Atlantic alliance.

Living and Working on the Cusp of Contradictions

Abstract: In this article Jo Phoenix argues that the struggles practitioners face to have the complex welfare needs of sexually exploited young people recognised are likely to continue into the future. The argument is made by examining three profound tensions shaping the context which both young people and practitioners inhabit. These tensions are between the, broadly, protectionist agenda of policy development on sexual exploitation and: firstly, socio-cultural changes in respect of consumption, sex and identities; secondly political changes and punitive youth justice system expansionism; and, finally, the closed and moralist rhetoric justifying recent policy changes. In the final analysis, young people and practitioners get caught in these contradictions in ways that foreclose critical examination of policy development and recognition of the complexities of the issues involved.

The Rise and Fall of the Yugoslav-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1948

Abstract: This essay discusses the Yugoslav-Soviet relations from the end of the Second World War until early 1948, when Stalin expelled Tito from the international communist movement. The primary focus is on the interaction of Moscow and Belgrade’s policies towards Albania, which until the middle of 1947 revealed the strength of the Yugoslav-Soviet relationship. Likewise, Stalin chose Albania to be the main frontline of the conflict when he turned against Tito. The demise of the Yugoslav-Soviet alliance, however, was not caused by the competition between Tito and Stalin for influence in Albania. Although Belgrade placed Moscow in the centre of its foreign policy by seeking the latter’s approval and support for its expansionism, Kremlin’s policies were dictated by considerations far greater than the bilateral ties between the two countries. When Soviet policy makers became convinced that the American commitment to Western Europe was permanent in the wake of the Marshall Plan, Kremlin decided to Stalinize the nascent communist bloc. In view of its popularity at home and assertiveness abroad, the Titoist regime was bound to be the primary victim of the Stalinization drive.

God and American Expansionism

Abstract: Although the United States constitutionally is a secular state, God always has been an integral part of policy. This can be traced back to colonial times when some of the earliest colonies were established for religious reasons. And because the very establishment of those colonies constituted expansion by Europeans into the New World, God therefore became the basis for expansion both before and after independence. In modern, more cynical times, we might see it simply as using God as a justification for conquest, subjugation and exploitation. (1) Certainly these were integral parts of expansion. Nevertheless, religion of itself was co-equal to conquest, subjugation and exploitation in the belief that the American people have something unique to offer the world. As late as 2003, a Pew Center poll showed that 71 percent of evangelical Christians, 40 percent of "mainline Christians" (i.e. mainstream Protestant), and 39 percent of Roman Catholics feel the United States has the "special protection of God." (2) When one considers that 75 percent of all Americans consider themselves Christian, these figures show how deeply this view of a special relationship with God permeates American society, no matter how illogical it may seem to some outsiders. It is not the purpose of this paper to defend or condemn the policies of the United States since its initial settlement by non-Indians. That would be imposing the values of the present onto the past. Every nation with any pretentions of power--including those no longer identified with expansion such as Sweden, Poland and Cambodia--has tried to impose itself outside its borders. It is rather to explain the role of religion in the shaping of American policy, and more importantly, the development of the vision that Americans have of themselves and their mission in the world. Even before the establishment of permanent English colonies in the New World, Spain already considered the role of religion. Part of the charges given to Columbus was that he was to propagate the faith in any lands he might encounter on his voyage. It was a role he took very seriously, to the point that he signed his given name in the Latin "Christo Ferens," the bearer of Christ. The role of God was given additional strength in 1537, when Pope Paul III issued the Bull Sublimis Deo, declaring the American Indians to be children of God and worthy of salvation. Henceforth, Spanish policy required evangelism to accompany colonial expansion. Consequently, the later religious-based communities established by the Separatists, or Pilgrims, and the Puritans in what is now New England simply reflected an already existing condition farther south in New Spain. New England is most often cited in this paper, because these colonies were religious in origin, and have had the most far-reaching influence on American outlook. Yet even in Virginia, where commerce and wealth were primary motivations for settlement, the English viewed the Indians as candidates for salvation. In 1610, a full decade before the first New England colony, the governing council of Virginia reported that settlers used trade as a means of leading the Indians to "the pearles of heaven." The Word of God, then, accompanied trade goods and weaponry as the Virginia colonists moved out from the immediate Chesapeake area, and deeper into the interior. (3) [Here it should be said that one reason the New England influence has been so all pervasive is that New Englanders followed the frontier as it progressed beyond the Hudson River, into the Ohio Valley, and even as far as Oregon. During the first eighty years of national existence, much of the nation had no particular quarrel with New England values, even if there was not total agreement. The only region openly and actively hostile to New England was the South, and this opposition was removed with secession in late 1860 and early 1861. During the subsequent Civil War, the federal government's war aim gradually shifted from the official position of preserving the Union to the abolition of slavery championed by the New England states, giving the region even more stature. …

Creating Frankensteins:The Taliban Movement of Pakistan

Abstract: But let us move away from the novel and into the political landscape of Pakistan. Subsequent governments in Pakistan—both civilian democratic, as well as military dictatorial—have had promethean dreams of their own. These have included a desire to be in control of the political and social environment of the country by taking an assortment of actions to broaden their constituencies in order to bolster their legitimacy. General Zia ul-Haq (1977-88), for example, instituted the ‘Islamization’ of Pakistan to bolster both his domestic and international legitimacy. Domestically he catered to the growing Sunni Islamic revivalist movement (to be distinguished from Islamist extremist movements) to the detriment of the Shia minority. At the same time, he presented himself to the international community as the vanguard against Soviet communist expansionism, much to the satisfaction of the Americans. The unintended consequences of this policy were the mushrooming of anti-Shia Sunni extremist groups and their counter anti-Sunni Shia extremist groups. Within the context of these growing sectarian extremist entities, the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto pursued classic divide-and-rule policies during both her aborted tenures in the 1990s. During this period, she courted the most extremist elements within both the Sunni and Shia camps in order to broaden her constituency and thus bolster her legitimacy. On numerous occasions during her tenures, Karachi is said to have bordered on a state of civil war. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did not alter the formula of these promethean dreams during his two aborted tenures in the 1990s. President (former General) Musharraf, while riding on a secular modernist platform, chose to turn a blind eye to the fomenting Islamist extremism, particularly in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan administered Kashmir, until the events of September 2001. Since 2001, Musharraf’s government has now pursued a policy of war against the now quite consolidated Islamist extremist elements. The Frankenstein had not only been created by then, by was now on a course of its own. The pragmatic logic of divide-and-rule policies and the policies of de facto appeasement (which is how ‘turning a blind eye’ as policy essentially became interpreted by the extremist elements) can perhaps be understood within the context of long held historical debate regarding the link between ‘authenticity’ and ‘orthodoxy’ in Pakistani civil society. This argument was most vociferously prevalent in the aftermath of the birth of the country in 1947 when the ‘authentic’ nature of Pakistan as a separate state for Muslims (the only state created to cater for a religious minority other than Israel in 1948) was being linked with the imperative of ‘orthodoxy’. The creation of an Islamic state (a non-secular theocratic type state) was by this time being hailed by the very Islamists who had initially opposed to the idea of a separate state of Pakistan (as they considered Islam as transnational and thus not needing a demarcation as a separate state). Political legitimacy of subsequent governments and political parties thus became defined in terms of the extent to which they catered to this link, which even the most secular of all politicians could not ignore. But if the link between authenticity and orthodoxy was troubling, the new link forged by the now emboldened Islamist extremist groups is even more disturbing - that of ‘authenticity’ with ‘extremism’. As the incremental product of the years of myopic policies of the civilian and military governments’ desire to consolidate their control, Islamist extremist groups seem to have culminated in the new Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, literally translated as the Movement of the Taliban of Pakistan or the Taliban Movement of Pakistan. Although the entire configuration of this movement is unclear, it is becoming more evident that this movement is a patchwork

From the 'Global War on Terror' to Containment: An Opinion Brief

Abstract: The Global War on Terror (GWoT) is maturing In the first Bush term, it was characterized by aggressive rhetoric (“regime change,” “bring ’em on”) and soaring declarations of principle (Bush’s second inaugural address about freedom as a divine gift) But the day-to-day grind of Iraq, collapsing approval figures for that war and the president himself, and the stubborn persistence of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have shifted Washington’s rhetoric President Kennedy famously referred to the long, patient effort to contain Soviet expansionism and wait out communism’s internal contradictions as a “twilight struggle” That Americans are coming to see the GWoT similarly is a healthy shift in its politics All three Democratic presidential frontrunners refused to commit to withdraw American forces from Iraq in their first term The US is recognizing, at last, that this is, as Donald Rumsfeld said, “the long war,” or more appropriately, the long slog This war – a global counterinsurgency actually – requires grim determination, tax hikes, and stolid public support[1] To be sure, this shift is depressing and infuriating American primacy in military might and economic output is unquestioned, but this power profile has proven disappointingly ineffective It is frustrating for the most powerful state in history to see its will thwarted so clearly in Eurasia by sub-state militias, terrorists, and brigands Democracies dislike long, ill-defined campaigns – bloody, seemingly intractable guerilla conflicts with no turning points, highlights, or parades The model for Iraq and the wider GWoT is not WWII or Korea – to which the president makes unhelpful reference – but America’s involvement in Vietnam and the Philippines, or Britain’s “emergency” efforts against the Irish Republican Army or in Malaya in the 1950s These wars took decades to complete, broached searing moral questions, and rarely show up on the good-versus-evil History Channel or Fox News Vietnam and the Philippines are disturbing “models” for America, but there is little alternative in its history The quagmire in Iraq demonstrates the limited efficacy of American hard power in this conflict The enemy is not states – like Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia These are easily defeated in conventional warfighting, but this does little to soften the harsh edge of the Islamist social movement that generates the terrorists who plotted 9/11 This is a struggle for hearts and minds – a conflict of values between liberal modernity and reactionary religious medievalism Long patience, frustrating, compromise-ridden diplomacy, asymmetric force (special operations instead of massed infantry or air power), and a constant recitation of Western values in the face of such controversies as the Muhammad cartoons or the threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2] is the path to an awkward “victory”

Response to Comments on “Asia Redux”

Abstract: the last year, as I have presented this paper at various venues, I have received a range of responses. One of them is that this essay is less a disinterested study and more like advocacy. I have hastened to confirm that mine is a position of ethical advocacy, but not without an empirical basis. Objectivity, impartiality, and autonomy from political positions are important ideals in the academic profession, and I count myself among the more enthusiastic supporters of such values. At the same time, I am not so naive as to believe that scholars do not inescapably reflect the intellectual and political positions to be found in the world out there. It is vital to acknowledge this connection because, in doing so, we subject our position and judgment to the scrutiny of their basis in objectivity and accuracy. What is to be scrutinized are the materials and case I am presenting for a reemergent Asia. My understanding of the material leads me to believe that some form of region making will continue to emerge. Where my personal ethics and preferences play a role lies in my advocacy of one direction among others that this development could take in the future. Turning to the question of the ethical aims of such a project, Wang Huis typically thoughtful considerations give us a good point of entry. Wang appears to be in fundamental agreement with my account, but he seeks to clarify the goals: how can this emergent Asia make a difference? His concluding summary puts it pithily, "the issue of Asia is not simply an Asian issue, but rather a matter of 4 world history/" Reconsidering "Asian history" is at once to reconstruct nineteenth-century European "world history," and an effort to break free of the twenty-first-century "new imperial" order and its associated logic. The critique of Eurocentrism, he argues, cannot be an affirmation of Asiacentrism, but rather an attempt to transform a logic dominated by "egocentrism, exclusivity, and expansionism." I endorse this vision and find it fully compatible with the thrust of my essay. The regions of Eurasia (or what Tansen Sen calls Afro-Eurasia) have been tied together for more than a thousand years, and "changing gears" in one part of this world has complex consequences in many parts of the rest of it whether in Asia or Europe. Jack Goody has recently made a persuasive argument that the Eurasian world has been deeply interconnected since the Bronze Age, and no major developments - for instance, the scientific or industrial

Racial Ideology and Western Hegemony

Abstract: Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development. By McCarthy Thomas. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 254 pp., $28.99 (ISBN-13: 978-0-521-74043-2). In response to the election of Barack Obama, the issue of race has resurfaced in relation to American and international politics. Indeed, scholars on both side of the debate have weighed in with their perspectives. While many have assumed that the election of an African-American president represents the end of racial discrimination, others suggest that race is still a seminal factor in American and global politics. With this in mind, the content and approach to Thomas McCarthy's Race, Empire and the Idea of Human Development is timely and controversial as it addresses issues of race within the context of domestic and international relations. The author has written an ambitious and engaging book that incorporates theory and critical analysis to highlight the racial dynamics of European and American power. The book provides ample coverage of race, empire and theories of development. The author outlines the functional aspects of racial theories and correctly defines them as behavioral drivers that have informed domestic and international race relations for the last five hundred years (Chowdhry et al. 2005; Jones et al. 2006; Keita et al. 2000). The book provides an historical exploration of the links between race and Western imperialism by identifying the nexus between European expansionism and the emergence of white supremacy. It intersects with human rights literature and …