Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2022"

OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract: Kate Fullagar’s The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire is a history informed by “two resurgent cultural concerns” in the present: “the possibilities of life writing and the moral legacy of empire” (5). This eminently readable book offers a new history of Britain’s “expansionist mission through the tale of three hitherto unconnected ­­biographies” (5): those of Cherokee ­­“warrior-diplomat” Ostenaco (1710s-c. 1780), British ­­“philosopher-artist” Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), and Ra ‘iatean-voyager Mai (1753-c.1780). The two Indigenous men, one from Cherokee lands near Britain’s colonies across the Atlantic and the other from islands in the Pacific new to European encroachment, never met one another. Their lives intersected around two things they shared in common though. Both visited London—Ostenaco as part of a Cherokee diplomatic entourage in 1762 and Mai as a traveler on one of Captain Cook’s voyages from 1774 to 1775. Both had their...

Transformation archetypes in global food systems

Abstract: Abstract Food systems are primary drivers of human and environmental health, but the understanding of their diverse and dynamic co-transformation remains limited. We use a data-driven approach to disentangle different development pathways of national food systems (i.e. ‘transformation archetypes’) based on historical, intertwined trends of food system structure (agricultural inputs and outputs and food trade), and social and environmental outcomes (malnutrition, biosphere integrity, and greenhouse gases emissions) for 161 countries, from 1995 to 2015. We found that whilst agricultural total factor productivity has consistently increased globally, a closer analysis suggests a typology of three transformation archetypes across countries: rapidly expansionist, expansionist, and consolidative. Expansionist and rapidly expansionist archetypes increased in agricultural area, synthetic fertilizer use, and gross agricultural output, which was accompanied by malnutrition, environmental pressures, and lasting socioeconomic disadvantages. The lowest rates of change in key structure metrics were found in the consolidative archetype. Across all transformation archetypes, agricultural greenhouse gases emissions, synthetic fertilizer use, and ecological footprint of consumption increased faster than the expansion of agricultural area, and obesity levels increased more rapidly than undernourishment decreased. The persistence of these unsustainable trajectories occurred independently of improvements in productivity. Our results underscore the importance of quantifying the multiple human and environmental dimensions of food systems transformations and can serve as a starting point to identify potential leverage points for sustainability transformations. More attention is thus warranted to alternative development pathways able of delivering equitable benefits to both productivity and to human and environmental health.

Is China Expansionist?

Abstract: China’sChina emergence as a great power has prompted many fears that it will start to become aggressive and militaristic. But while European powers have acted this way historically, China’s own long history tells us that it wields power in a very different manner.

In Defense of Comparisons: Russia and the Transmutations of Imperialism in International Law

Abstract: Abstract While Western imperialism played a crucial role in the creation of modern international law, it is ever more important to analyze the engagements of non-Western imperialist powers with the field so as to comprehend the changing global patterns of legalized violence and expansionism. In this Essay, we analyze Russia's international legal arguments in support of its use of force against Ukraine through the lens of inter-imperial rivalry. In so doing, we call for strict scrutiny of the deployments of jus ad bellum equally by all imperial powers.

Sublimated Expansionism? Living Space Ideas in Nordic Small-State Geopolitics

Abstract: Abstract In intellectual histories of geography as well as in international relations, geopolitics is usually the business of great powers, understood as the expansion of hard power through territorial control. However, the existence of a ‘ Geopolitik of the weak’ has also been theorised, premised on the ability of smaller states – such as the Nordic countries – to secure their survival through a wider range of policy instruments. In this chapter, we analyse key themes in the work of two Nordic geographical thinkers deeply concerned with the place and status of their home countries in the era of high modernity – Rudolf Kjellén and Gudmund Hatt. Relying upon their scholarly works as well as relevant public debates circa 1905–1945, we trace the ‘small-state geopoliticking’ of Hatt and Kjellén, identifying three key characteristics of their style of small-state geopolitics: (1) determinism is qualified by voluntarism; (2) space is complemented by future; and (3) external expansion is sublimated into internal progress. In its reconceptualisation of living space as primarily concerned with existential survival as premised upon future progress, rather than outward-oriented territorial expansion, small-state geopolitics emerges as a highly situated, somewhat quaint but nonetheless significant element in Nordic theorising of geography.

Rising tension in the Himalayas: A geospatial analysis of Chinese border incursions into India

Abstract: The China-India border is the longest disputed border in the world. The countries went to war in 1962 and there have been recurring border skirmishes ever since. Reports of Chinese incursions into Indian territory are now a frequent occurrence. This rising tension between the world’s most populous countries not only poses risks for global security and the world economy, but also has a negative impact on the unique ecology of the Himalayas, because of the expanding military infrastructure. We have assembled a unique data set of the dates and locations of the major incursions over the past 15 years. We find that the conflict can be separated into two independent conflicts, the western and eastern sectors. The incursions in these sectors are statistically independent. However, major incidents do lead to an increased tension that persists for years all along the entire Line of Actual Control (LAC). This leads us to conclude that an agreement on the exact location of a limited number of contested regions, such as the Doklam plateau on the China-Bhutan border, has the potential to significantly defuse the conflict, and could potentially settle the dispute at a further date. Building on insights from game theory, we find that the Chinese incursions in the west are strategically planned and may aim for a more permanent control over specific contested areas. This finding is in agreement with other studies into the expansionist strategy of the current Chinese government.

Mapping Kyushu’s War-Related Heritage

Abstract: This chapter by Edward Vickers analyzes the interpretation of war-related heritage in Kyushu, Japan, the region at the forefront both of Japan’s modernization from the Meiji Period onwards, and of imperial Japanese expansionism in Asia. Vickers surveys some of the major commemorative sites around the island relating to the Asia-Pacific War, and examines how these have been preserved, curated, and often used – for example in local programs of ‘peace education’ - to perpetuate highly partial and nationalistic narratives of Japan’s past relations with continental Asia. He concludes by considering the implications of Kyushu’s selective public remembrance of the war for local politics and culture, as well as for relations with neighboring Asian societies.

The Red Herring of Economic Populism

Abstract: Popular among economists, pundits and policymakers, the theory of economic populism is used to criticize expansionist policies purportedly enacted by fiscally irresponsible populist governments. Introduced by Jeffrey Sachs, Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards in 1989, the theory maintains that such policies put into motion a cycle of economic devastation where populists register initial successes but soon face bottlenecks and other market failures that lead to hyperinflation and balance-of-payments problems, ending with regime change and the restoration of orthodox policies. On their part, political scientists have strongly resisted economically deterministic interpretations of populism, submitting adequate evidence that populist phenomena are not associated with particular economic policies. However, the popularity of economic populism remains intact. This article opens a new and expanded line of criticism by exposing the normative historical foundations of the theory of economic populism, while highlighting an array of conceptual, methodological and empirical flaws that render it unfit for scientific purposes. The insistence on its use despite obvious analytical shortcomings is explained as an artifact of economic populism’s ideologically weaponized nature.

Dal Lebensraum allo spazio vitale – la ricezione politica del pensiero di Ratzel in Italia, 1900–1943

Abstract: Abstract. The debate on the political role of Ratzel's thinking during the first half of the 20th century usually focuses on Nazi Germany and the concept of Lebensraum, but provides little information about its reception in other linguistic contexts. In order to fill this gap, the paper explores the re-elaboration of Ratzel's political geography in Italy from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the fascist period, when the term of “spazio vitale” (living space) became a key element of the Italian projects for the postwar “new order”. The paper argues that the Italian understanding of Ratzel oscillated between irredentist and imperialist interpretations, deeply influenced by the domestic and international situation. Moreover, it traces how the second interpretation emerged at the very beginning of the century – long before Rudolf Kjellén and Karl Haushofer – and gained momentum in the 1930s, as Italian intellectuals used the concept of living space to promote expansionism and the trilateral rapprochement with Germany and Japan.

Proxy Wars and the Dilemma of Global Peace: Interrogating the Roles of the Super Powers (1946-1991)

Abstract: The end of the Second World War brought about the emergence of two super powers, the United States and the Soviet Union that assumed major key players in global Politics. The two superpowers adopted expansionist policies in their attempt to build alliances so as to implement and protect their diverse ideological interests. In the process, proxy wars ensued in different part of the globe. Adopting secondary source of data and Content Analysis as well as Power Theory, the paper examined the roles of the super powers in proxy wars and the consequences on global peace. The paper discovered that the Super-powers dominated the global political system through proxy wars such as the Vietnam War, Korean War and the Cuba Missile Crisis among others. The paper further noted the consequences of proxy war on global peace to include arms proliferations and the development of nuclear weapons, high human fatalities and destruction of major cities and the rise in global terrorist groups and attacks. The paper made recommendations among others that global ideological rigidity should be softened to accommodate varieties and the United Nations should give more attention to the situation in Korea Peninsula to prevent the repeat of the 1950s.

Living Too Long

Abstract: Matthew Redmond, “Living Too Long: Republican Time in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Novels” (pp. 29–55) This essay first suggests that antebellum America’s cultural imagination was organized around patterns of generational succession unfolding across what I call “republican time,” and then explores the ways that James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels cross-examine and destabilize that pattern. Reading The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and The Prairie (1827) through the dual lenses of biopolitical criticism and temporality studies, I treat Natty Bumppo, with his stubborn refusal to die or even fully subside into the background of American life, as a friction against the machine of republican time and the idea of steady national progress it implies. With his peculiar perspective on national events, manifesting in a singular use of grammar, Natty’s character opens to Cooper’s readers certain alternative approaches to being in American time. Cooper’s writings thus demonstrate some of the ways that nineteenth-century American historical fiction, far from uncritically celebrating the forces of U.S. expansionism and imperialism, delivers an incisive critique of them.

Non-expansionist variants of poland’s strategic culture: a retrospective of ideas and current implications

Abstract: This article examines how non-expansionist types of strategic culture emerged and gradually developed in Poland. The study aims to identify the features of non-expansionist types of Polish strategic culture for a more objective analysis of the country’s modern foreign and security policy. The article begins by describing the emergence and use of the concept of strategic culture, offering a typology of strategic cultures based on the work of the ‘cultural realist’ Alastair Johnston. Then it employs a qualitative method of process tracing to outline the sequence of events and the ideological constructs that led to the emergence or degradation of the corresponding types of strategic culture. The strategic culture of neutrality, exposed to external influences and revised republicanism ideas, is shown to have laid the foundation for a strategic culture of political fortification (or an outpost) in Poland. This strategic culture has its origins in the idea of the ethical superiority of the Polish state, although the details of this superiority may differ dramatically in specific situations. At the same time, none of the types of the accommodation culture has yet emerged in Poland, albeit accommodation seems to be a promising lead for the further development of the country’s strategic culture.

The Seeds of War

Abstract: The Seeds of War Gregory Afinogenov (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution An antiwar protester in Saint Petersburg on February 27, 2022 (Sergei Mihailicenko/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) [End Page 94] Nothing the U.S. left can do or say will change the course of the war in Ukraine, but it was still embarrassing to find DSA’s International Committee obsessing over “NATO’s militarization” in the lead up to the invasion. (A subsequent statement by the National Political Committee rightly condemns the Russian invasion but implies that NATO expansionism “set the stage” for the conflict.) There are excellent reasons to criticize NATO, and U.S. intervention abroad, both generally and in this specific context— and, of course, our primary duty as socialists is to critique the actions of our own government rather than provide left-wing versions of its own propaganda against hostile states. But it is all too easy for this kind of reasoning to turn into a form of provincialism that sees only the United States and its allies as primary actors; other countries, in this view, only act in response to U.S. aggression and not for reasons of their own. This is what happened here. The truth is, NATO has no more devoted accomplice than Vladimir Putin. No other traditional enemy of U.S. imperialism has done more to validate the fever dreams of the most extreme hawks. Twenty years ago the alliance was a Cold War relic whose relentless expansion at Russia’s expense was a transparent U.S. attempt to cement unipolarity while its rivals were weak. More recently, it has been riven by internal crises, from Turkish aggression in Syria and Armenia to Donald Trump’s clear contempt for the organization. Yet each time Putin has escalated a political conflict into a military one, or a local military conflict into a larger one, both leaders and citizens of NATO states have been reminded that there are, after all, some benefits to living under the Article 5 umbrella. In Ukraine, only a small minority supported NATO accession a decade ago; today, after years of Russian-instigated conflict and territorial losses, a clear majority does. Traditionally, the alternative favored by NATO opponents has been “Finlandization,” in which smaller states agree to a neutral role in great-power politics in exchange for guarantees of sovereignty and internal noninterference. Thanks to Putin’s actions, this option is now evaporating: Finland itself now supports hardline [End Page 95] sanctions on Russia and has joined other European states in sending military shipments to Ukraine. So if Putin’s principal motivation is to resist uncompromising NATO expansionism, why has he behaved in a way that guarantees that his neighbors will see him as a growing security threat? His own speeches and writings offer an answer to this question. For Putin, resisting NATO is in fact secondary to the larger goal of reuniting Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians under Russian rule—or, failing that, at least ensuring that Russian speakers across the former Soviet Union are either in a secure alliance bloc with Russia (as in the case of Belarus and Kazakhstan, which have significant Russian-speaking populations) or are governed by it directly. Putin sees Russian statehood and Russian national and linguistic identity as inextricably connected, and he is willing to spill Russian and Ukrainian blood to protect this nationalist vision. He also seems to believe that the clock is ticking—younger generations of people in the post-Soviet world are less likely to see the region’s political boundaries as a problem in need of fixing. Hence the desperate, fatal urgency of Putin’s moves in 2013–14 and again in 2022. This explains Putin’s particular vitriol toward Ukraine—not just its pro-Western government, but the nature of Ukrainian statehood itself, which he sees as having been artificially constructed by Lenin during the 1920s. Putin does not deny the existence of a Ukrainian national identity or movement prior to the Revolution; instead, what he objects to is the Soviet predilection for attaching primarily Russian-speaking regions like Crimea, Donbass, and Kharkiv to a republic he sees as vulnerable to control by nationalist Ukrainians who...

The Iron Age in Central Thailand

Abstract: The emergence of iron metallurgy in Mainland Southeast Asia (~fifth century BC) marks a major breakthrough rather cohesive, although strongly regionalized cultural traditions rooted in the southward, long- haul agricultural dispersal originating from south-central China. With the establishment of the centralized states of the Qin (221–206 BC) and Western Han (206 BC–AD 23) dynasties, the northern belt of Mainland Southeast Asia (Lingnan region, Yunnan lacustrine plains, and Song Hong River valley) attracted the expansionist policies of the Chinese empire. The southern regions of Southeast Asia, including central Thailand, followed a different path leading to interactive contacts with the Indian subcontinent and to increased regional trade networks. Iron tools, surplus management, population expansion, and a progressive localization of exotics cultural traits drove the elites of central Thailand toward a step-by-step growth in cultural complexity with the emergence of medium-complex social systems/chiefdom analogues.

Bismarck – Wilhelm – Hitler: Continuity or Break with Tradition?

Abstract: The article examines the problem of similarities and major contradictions between the periods of 1871–1890 (Bismarckian Reich) and 1890–1918 (Wilhelmine Reich) in German history. Although anti-democratic tendencies were a common feature of both, ideology and practice in the field of foreign policy differed sharply. The Bismarckian notion of a “saturated state”, which implied a commitment to the status quo, was superseded by the expansionist “Griff nach der Weltmacht” (the push towards a “world power” equal to the British and French colonial empires). However, the expansionism of the Wilhelmine Empire was not unlimited, unlike the Third Reich's quest for world domination. The hostility of the Wilhelmine Germany towards Russia, which represented a clear departure from the Bismarckian traditions, also had some limits, and therefore cannot be equated with an inexorable programme of extermination of the Hitler regime. Having critically assessed the concepts of some German historians, the author concludes that no line of continuity could be drawn between the Bismarck Empire and the Third Reich, a line that exists between the latter and the Wilhelmine Empire, although one should not overestimate the commonalities between the two regimes.

The Magical Work of Brand Futurity: The Mythmaking of Disney+

Abstract: The Walt Disney Company has maintained an aggressive approach to brand management for nearly a century. With the acquisition of a number of highly reputable companies, this aggression has become unignorable within the media industry. At the same time, Disney has embraced digital expansionism, culminating with the launch of its own on-demand streaming service, Disney+, in late 2019. The platform’s documentary series offer a unique window into this new era of the Disney empire, usefully demonstrating the careful navigation of corporate legacy and history in the creation and maintenance of what I term brand futurity. Thinking critically about the concept of collective imaginaries in the context of the digital and streaming economies, this article argues that these docuseries illustrate Disney’s digital corporate strategy as a narrativization of wonderful work and ever-expanding value.

Eastward Motion of Peter the Great's Empire

Abstract: The time of Peter the Great is notable not only for the reforms that transformed the country, but also for the emergence of new ideas of the place of Russia as a great power in the world. Peter the Great's imperial dreams went far beyond the establishment of Russia’s domination in the Baltic. He was mindful of the problem of the West-East relationship. It is important to take into account the tsar’s economic considerations. He was fascinated by the ideas of mercantilism and dreamed of turning Russia into a transit space between the West and the East. It would allow enriching the country. He wanted to create a unified transport system (mainly waterway) that would connect the Baltic and the East. In addition, the myths about the fabulous wealth of the East heated Peter the Great's imperial imagination. It manifested itself in sending expeditions to Central Asia and the Caspian Sea. Their purpose was not only to explore, but also to annex new territories. Peter the Great's imperial dreams were expressed most vividly during the Persian campaign, the aim of which was not only to conquer the northern part of Persia, but also to create a base there for an expansionist campaign to India. Peter the Great's plans were extensive. He intended to create a new city-port in the mouth of the Kura similar to St. Petersburg and a center of eastern trade. Thus, he planned to transfer the traditional trade routes between the East and the West to the territory of Russia. However, the tsar’s death prevented him from realizing these and other grandiose plans of conquest.

�Languages don�t have bones, so you can just break them�: rethinking multilingualism in education policy and practice in Africa

Abstract: The article begins by looking at developments within Modern Languages and reflects upon the importance of the move towards the consideration of cultural and social phenomena in transnational perspective. It suggests how the �transnational turn� can be interpreted within the disciplinary field and, in this context, refers to the work of the large project �Transnationalizing Modern Languages� (2014�2018), part of the AHRC�s Translating Cultures research theme. The article looks at how a transnational approach can advance the move to decolonise research and teaching in the subject area and at how it promotes understanding of the proximity of the colonial world. Drawing upon the example of creative writing on the expansionist phase of Italy�s history, the article explores how the ongoing legacies of colonialism can be addressed within an approach that is centred on the traces of past instances of mobility and displacement. It concludes by pointing to the need for the transmedial study of the ghosts of the Italian empire.

OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract: Scholars of nineteenth-century expansionism revised the manifest destiny narrative by analyzing the contingent nature of westward expansion as well as the fragility of the early republic. With Breakaway Americas, Thomas Richards Jr. offers his interpretation of a critical period in the history of American expansion—the decade or so before the Mexican-American War, which he refers to as the “Texas Moment.” The book focuses on six breakaway Americas—Texas, Upper Canada, the Cherokee Nation, the Mormon Zion, California, and Oregon. Texas independence set the stage for a series of breakaway Americas, which upheld American values as the breakaway Americans saw them and as they believed that the United States had forsaken in some form. Richards's study of “breakaway Americans” creating “breakaway Americas” covers familiar ground inasmuch as it challenges the triumphalist narrative of westward expansion. Richards distinguishes his book from other studies of expansionism in the way he conceptualizes the fluid...

The Administration of the <i>Imperium Romanum</i> in the Second Century bce

Abstract: Abstract This chapter gives a brief summary of how the imperium Romanum—interpreted as the sum of the imperia that were granted year after year to magistrates, promagistrates, and priuati—was administered during the second century bce, and notably how discussions on provincial administration shaped the foreign and especially the domestic political debate. If, on one hand, the proliferation of practices like the prorogatio imperii, or the granting of commands to priuati, gave Rome the instruments with which it could pursue a very large-scale expansionist policy, on the other hand they provoked strong and harsh debates within the senatorial elite that paved the way for its subsequent crisis.

Timorese Islanders and the Portuguese Empire in the Indonesian Archipelago

Abstract: This chapter approaches the long history of the Portuguese Empire in the Asia-Pacific world through a micro-history of a paradigmatic colonial object: national flags.1 It analyses the ‘fantastic stories’ told by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europeans about the Indigenous cultural appropriations of Portuguese flags in East Timor – the eastern half of Timor island, a small but durable Portuguese establishment from the 1500s until 1974 – with a view to discussing the complex exchanges between Indigenous people and European objects from overseas. From the outset of Portuguese imperial expansionism in the 1500s, flags accompanied Portugal’s ambitions and became an ubiquitous presence throughout the Portuguese imperial world for centuries. They were handed over to the rulers of Indigenous polities as tokens of Portuguese kingship power, as vassalage gifts in exchange for allegiance and obedience to the Crown of Portugal. This was initiated by early modern strategies of conquest and vassalage expansionism that in some settings seem to have persisted until the 1910s. It was the case of East Timor. In this remote but lasting Portuguese colony in the Asia-Pacific region, flags of Portuguese origin became significant not only in the practices and imaginaries of Europeans, but also in the Indigenous societies that, at some point in the past, had forged ties with the Portuguese – and in this process came into possession of Portuguese flags.

From Expansionist Power to the Erosion of Bios in Arendt’s Interpretation of Hobbes

Abstract: This essay examines Arendt’s interpretation of Hobbes as it develops from “Expansion and the Philosophy of Power” (1946) and The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) to The Human Condition (1958) by focusing on the role of the concept of process, and the reductive concept of life as “the life-process” in order to highlight an important way in which Arendt sees Hobbes as contributing to the valorization of the life-process in modernity. By reconstructing Arendt’s interpretation of Hobbes as it develops in these texts, I aim to expand our understanding of Hobbes’s importance for Arendt’s analysis of modernity by showing that Hobbes is not only the philosopher of an original “expansionist” concept of power and a political-economic imperialist state but also, on account of the centrality of the notion of process within it, key to the elevation of life as the highest value in the modern vita activa.

Tagore's Political Philosophy with Special Reference to Nationalism: General Overview

Abstract: We have to understand the relevance of Rabindranath Tagore's thoughts on radical nationalism in this background. We have to explain how nationalism has played a constructive role in all spheres – social, economic, cultural, political and ideological – and how radical nationalism has led us to struggle that as humanity reached the edge of the world-village. When radical nationalism seems to be holding him back, how two decades after liberalization and globalization we are today Brexit, Trump, Marik Paine, China's expansionist attitude, Syria crisis, alchemy problem, Ukraine-Russia problem, protectionism and environmental facing the scenario of running away from responsibilities. Rabindranath Tagore has probably never been so relevant. Abstract in Hindi Language: कट्टर राष्ट्रवाद पर रवीन्द्रनाथ टैगोर के विचारों की प्रासंगिकता को हमे इसी पृष्ठभूमि में समझना होगा। हमें समझाना होगा कि कैसे सामाजिक, आर्थिक, सांस्कृतिक, राजनैतिक और वैचारिक- सभी क्षैत्रों में राष्ट्रवाद ने एक सृजनात्मक भूमिका अदा की है और कैसे कट्टर राष्ट्रवाद हमें संघर्ष की ओर ले गया है कि जैसे-जैसे मानवता विश्व-ग्राम के मुंहाने पर पहुंची ही थी जब कट्टर राष्ट्रवाद उसे पीछे खींचता हुआ प्रतीत हो रहा है कि कैसे उदारीकरण और वैश्वीकरण के दो दशकों बाद आज हम बे्रक्सिट, ट्रम्प, मरीक पेन, चीन के विस्तारवादी रवैए, सीरिया संकट, कीमिया की समस्या, यूक्रेन रूस की समस्या, संरक्षणवाद और पर्यावरणीय जिम्मेदारियों से भागने के परिदृश्य का सामना कर रहे है। रवीन्द्रनाथ टैगोर इतने प्रासंगिक शायद कभी नहीं रहे। Keywords: राष्ट्रवाद, टैगोर, दर्शन, चिन्तन, आध्यात्मिक, वैश्विक।

The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State

Abstract: Progressives and liberals will likely embrace David Vine's book, which claims that war has been the norm in U.S. history and which repeatedly asserts that U.S. leaders have unremittingly engaged in offensive wars of choice for imperialist purposes. They will surely be persuaded by the evidence he employs to substantiate his sweeping indictment of U.S. military interventionism at calamitous and nearly incalculable human and ecological costs. Conservatives, however, will likely reject Vine's charges and conclude that his book is a politically biased polemic that simultaneously disparages legitimate military actions taken in the name of national defense and contemptibly and disgracefully dishonors the benevolence and personal sacrifices of U.S. military personnel and their families. This jarring book, with a subdued title, relentlessly indicts most U.S. wars as egregiously offensive, expansionist, and frequently genocidal. In fluid, clear, forceful prose, and employing personal vignettes, eye-catching quotations, and arresting data, Vine's analysis appears compelling. He solemnly and repeatedly asserts that the United States has engaged in perpetual war, impelled by the establishment of U.S. foreign military bases (today the nation has about eight hundred of them in eighty-five countries), which have sustained and benefitted a military-industrial-congressional-corporate war machine at incomprehensible costs, for purposes that have been deliberately buried, erased, or shrouded in nationalistic myths.

Russia’s Northern Sea Route and Arctic Railway Corridor

Abstract: This paper aims to present the contents of the construction of the Northern Sea Route and Arctic Railway Corridor in Russia, and to provide prospects along with the limitations of this plan. The Russian President Decree, “On the Fundamentals of Russian Federation State Policy in the Arctic until 2035” defines the long term directions and priorities of the AZRF(Arctic Zone of Russian Federation) socio-economic development until 2035. The most important rail projects under active consideration in or near AZRF are a line connecting Sosnogorsk in the Komi Republic to the port of Indiga in the Nenets Autonomous Region etc. In addition to existing line, the Kremlin instructed the Russian government to submit proposals for the railway link, in 2022. This called for “proposals for the creation of a railway route to the Barents Sea in the area of the bay of the Indiga River”. However, Russia's ambitious plan to build an Arctic railway corridor has many problems that may arise in the implementation of the plan, including capital investment and environmental issues. Russia needs to work harder to secure confidence and create an international environment to promote long-term development, as Russia's Arctic development can also provide an excuse for NATO and the United States, which are concerned about Russian expansionism.

From islands to territorial empire: The French colonial administration at Gorée and the environmental causes of continental expansion after the Seven Years War

Abstract: This article explores the relationship between islands and the continental shore through the lens of the French colonial administration at Gorée after the Seven Years War. In this period, the French Ministry of the Marine deliberately sought to check French territorial expansion across the globe in order to favor France’s lucrative plantation complex in the Caribbean. As part of this official policy, Gorée was deemed critical for the protection of the French slave trade, but not seen as a point of departure for colonial empire on the African continent. Unreliable provisioning from the metropole, labor shortages, and environmental conditions at Gorée, however, pushed local French administrators to rely on the African mainland for resources, nourishing expansionist ambitions in the process. Focusing on the environmental, geo-political, and commercial dimensions of island-continental interaction at Gorée and the Senegambia’s coast, this article brings into view unaddressed tensions among official French imperial policy, colonial provisioning, and territorial expansion.

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Abstract: In recent years, the geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has dominated the headlines. Many have charted the polarisation between a Saudi-led Sunni camp and an Iranian-led Shia one, assuming that a predominantly Shia state like Iraq would automatically ally with Iran. In this compelling account, Katherine Harvey tells a different story: Iraq's current alignment with Iran was not a foregone conclusion. Rather, Saudi efforts to undermine Iran have paradoxically empowered it.Harvey investigates why the Saudis refused to engage with Iraq's post-2003 Shia-led government, despite continual outreach by Iraq's new leaders and considerable pressure from the United States. She finds that certain deeply ingrained assumptions predisposed Saudi leaders to see a Shia-led Iraq as naturally beholden to Iran: the view that Iran is inherently expansionist, and the belief that Arab Shia tend to be loyal to it. This outlook was simplistic, even downright inaccurate; and, in refusing to engage, the Saudis created a self-fulfilling prophecy.As Harvey demonstrates, members of Iraq's new government initially sought to establish a positive relationship with Saudi Arabia, and to pursue a course independent from Iran. But, isolated and rejected by Saudi King Abdullah, Iraq ultimately had nowhere else to turn.