Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 2023"

Radical internationalism and shifts in the global order

Abstract: As moderator of the panel of speakers on ‘Radical internationalism and shifts in the global order’ at the ‘New Circuits of Anti-racism Conference’, King’s College London, October 2022 (IRR50), the author takes stock of challenging global conditions in terms of austerity and debt, mounting oppositions, capitalist crises and authoritarianisms and post-global ‘war on terror’ moves against Chinese and Russian expansionism. How, she asks, do these changes impact social movements and solidarities?

The Cartographic Propositions of Raumforschung und Raumordnung, 1936-1955: from Territorial Expansion to Defeat and Division

Abstract: This paper examines shifts in the design of, use of and rhetoric accompanying maps published in the periodical Raumforschung und Raumordnung from 1936 through 1955. In the discussion of these maps published prior to and during the Second World War, special attention is paid to the depiction of the German Empire, the incorporation of Austria into maps of the Third Reich, and cartographic portrayalsof Poland and other eastern European territory. Particularly in-depth investigation into articles and maps written and drawn by Reinhold Niemeyer and Rudolf Hoffmann is also undertaken here. In evaluating the maps published in Raumforschungund Raumordnung (RuR) after Germany’s defeat, this paper focuses on depictions of the new Federal Republic of Germany and the mapping of its relationship, geographically, to the German Democratic Republic. While the content of the maps published in RuR reflected the territorial reality of its German cartographers and authors – from violent expansionism to defeat, territorial diminution and a split into two distinct nation states –, this paper argues that many of the cartographic strategies employed in its pages remained relatively consistent over time.

Bernard Magubane on the political economy of race and class in South Africa

Abstract: In his writings, Bernard Magubane theorizes racial capitalism but without necessarily invoking the term. Instead, he frequently refers to “the political economy of race and class” in the South African society. First, Magubane traces the roots of capitalism and racism in South Africa back to European expansionism. Second, he grapples with dispossession during the colonial period and calls it “the fact of conquest”. This period was a significant prelude to apartheid capitalism and racism. Third, having analyzed these forms of domination, he argues that black people in South Africa would be liberated through the insurrection of the working people. Magubane’s main contribution is his use of historical analysis to understand the next move by imperialism and its impact on the interaction of race and class and the struggle for liberation. Magubane seeks to develop a clear theoretical framework to understand the nature of the South African society. In this paper, I will attempt to illustrate Magubane’s contribution to Marxist thought based on his study of South Africa’s racially hierarchical political economy.

Beer, Drugs and Meat

Abstract: Feasts were integral to pre-Columbian political economies in the Andes. The large feasts of the Inca Empire, which institutionalized asymmetrical relationships between subjects and the state, are the best known, and a point of comparison for many pre-Inca societies. It is therefore unsurprising that the feasts hosted by the Wari, an expansionist state in the central highland of Peru some 700 years earlier, are often assumed to have played a similar role. In this article, we argue that there were substantial differences between early Wari and Inca practices that reflect the different objectives of their hosts. The large feasts in Inca plazas emphasized the unbridgeable gap between ruler and subjects, while early Wari hosts strove to build interpersonal relationships between households in far more intimate affairs. To better understand the nature of Wari feasting, we discuss the acquisition, preparation, consumption and disposal of roasted camelid meat and hallucinogen-laced beer that were featured at the feasts of the Wari-affiliated settlement of Quilcapampa. The differences in feasting practices may relate to profound differences between early Wari and Inca statecraft that would narrow in Wari’s final century, as the state matured.

The Khwārazmshāhi Dynasty: Emerging from the Saljuq Structure

Abstract: The Khwārazmshāhi used the Saljuq structural resources to transform their local dynasty into an empire. The lack of effective bureaucracy widened the gap in the power structure between Soltān Mohammad and his mother, Tarkān Khātun. The heterogeneity of the goals of the Khwārazmshāhi and the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate brought the power structures of the caliphate and the soltānate face to face. The unending expansionist policies of the Khwārazmshāhis in the eastern territories made them neighbors with the Mongols, who were far more militarily powerful than the Khwārazmshāhis. Soltān Mohammad’s rapid and hasty escape fastened the process of these conquests and with the death of his son, Soltān Jalāl al-Din, the Khwārazmshāhi ended in Iran.

Reconstituting the destituted

Abstract: The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 not only stopped the Russian Empire's expansionist ambitions but also had an impressive racial and geopolitical effect from East to West Asia. Geopolitically, it meant that Asians could overcome the Europeans, and racially that the “yellow race” could overcome the “white race.” 1 It further means that if Asians felt that way it was because geopolitical Eurocentrism and racial classifications were already in place and entrenched in Asian subjectivities. I am assuming that such sensing and emotioning were not the millenarian legacies of Asian civilizations but schooled into them by the European invasions of their territories, perhaps since the creation of the British and the Dutch East Indian Companies in 1600 and 1601.

International Politics and Local Change at Emar in the Late Bronze Age

Abstract: Abstract This article considers the administrative changes that occurred in the city of Emar in the early 13th century BCE—including the beginning of the now well-known bifurcation in scribal practices between the Conventional Middle Euphrates Format (also known as the “Syrian” system) and the Free Format (also known as the “Syro-Hittite” system)—in the context of international political currents. In order to position my understanding of Emarite history with respect to the ongoing chronology debate, I offer new chronological considerations using internal data from the Emarite legal documents that affirm the substantial overlap of the two scribal systems at Emar (most recently argued for by Daniel Fleming and Sophie Démare-Lafont), while also adjusting the dating of some important synchronisms. Following the establishment of the chronological position, the article poses the question of why the material changes at Emar were executed by the Hittite empire exactly when they were, despite a previous policy of non-intervention. I argue that the increasing threat posed by expansionist activity of the Middle Assyrian state to Hittite hegemony over the Syrian territories—of which Emar was the farthest south-easterly border state—is a contributing factor to administrative changes in Emar.

Chestiunea strâmtorilor Bosfor și Dardanele

Abstract: "The struggle for control of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, strategic access points on the only waterway between the Black Sea and the oceans of the world, has a long history. It has become even topical in the modern age, as an effect of the increase in economic power and the expansionist tendencies of some states, bearing the imprint of the flourishing or decline of some empires whose fate depended on the strategic situation at the junction of Europe and Asia. However, 86 years ago, in a conciliatory setting, a diplomatic instrument was signed in Montreux, emblematic in the evolution of international law, based on a real spirit of harmonization of political, economic and military interests, which authorized the transit of ships and aircraft through the area of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits. Still in force today, the Montreux Convention signed on 20 July 1936, which put Ankara in possession of the keys to the straits, is one of the long-lasting international agreements, limiting the number and tonnage of vessels and, in the case of warships, the duration of their presence in the area, a fact that, in the almost nine decades, has produced effects on the interests of some states, be they Black Sea littoral states or not. The current war in Ukraine, launched on 24 February 2022, brings back in the diplomatic debates the document whose articles relating to the conflict situation have not been invoked since the end of the Second World War, although, over time, interested parties have strongly advocated for the revision of the Montreux Convention."

Market Transition and Inequality in China

Abstract: Abstract China’s economic liberalization bears both similarities to and differences from Russia’s. As in Russia, China’s liberalization created numerous opportunities to manipulate the rules of the transition and to extract rents, creating wide gaps between winners and losers. Although economic growth has raised incomes for the population, the growth flows most to those at the top. Total economic inequality—when hidden incomes are included—is rising. Despite awareness of the problem of inequality, China’s regime has avoided taking the difficult policy measures needed to ensure a more inclusive model of economic growth. Instead, corruption and cronyism remain rampant. As in Russia, the current regime has foreclosed any movement toward democracy, instead turning toward personalist, authoritarian rule and an expansionist foreign policy.

Emphasizing Democracy Hampers Biden's Foreign Policy

Abstract: Abstract:The Biden Administration touts shared democratic values as the basis of a coalition that will side with Washington against China's challenge to some of the international norms supported by the United States. While it resonates with traditional U.S. sensibilities, this approach is problematic in practice. The pool of liberal states is small and shrinking, and U.S. global prestige as the lodestar of democracy has declined. Instead, U.S. diplomacy should rally partners based on the more widely shared common security and economic interests in opposing Chinese expansionism and economic coercion.

The Role of Japanese Naval Force and Emergence of its International Status (1914-1921)

Abstract: To achieve its expansionist regional ambitions in China and Korea, and to protect its shipping lines in the Pacific Ocean, and to justify its claims in protecting East Asia from the dangers of German naval bases, on the one hand, and its endeavor to establish peace and prevent the spread of battles to the Far East, on the other hand. The research was concerned with the nature of these allegations and the extent of their truth, in light of tracking the role of the Japanese naval force during the First World War (1914- 1918), and then the emergence of its international standing until 1921, as the developments witnessed in those years represented an important opportunity for Japan at all levels, especially after Its victories made it a major naval power on the international level. However, the internal problems that always faced the Japanese naval power did not stand in the way of its ambitions, which succeeded in employing war as a means to obtain governmental financial specializations to implement its expansion and development programs, especially in light of the recovery of the Japanese economy during the war years as a result of Europe’s preoccupation with preparing the requirements of the war economy, which provided an opportunity Important for the Japanese industry and its various products in controlling the domestic and foreign markets and developing its heavy industry, especially the construction of warship docks, which led to an increase in its profits and the number of its industrial workers who, in the short term, caused a radical change in the structure of society. Despite its active participation in the First World War on the side of the friendly Entente countries and the protection of its merchant ships in the Mediterranean and its desire to join the European arena of operations, its expansionist ambitions and its attempt to control Siberia and obtain political and regional privileges in China and other regions on the one hand, and continue to increase Its spending on industry that supports the elements of strengthening, expanding and developing its naval power in 1920, in a way that amounts to international standards for its counterparts on the other hand. This led to the fear of Britain, the United States of America and France, and their doubts about Japan's real intentions and future dangers in the Far East and the Pacific Ocean, and then called for a conference in 1921 to determine international naval armaments, in a way that guarantees preventing Japan from being at the level of the major international naval powers.

The Question of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles Straits

Abstract: "The struggle for control of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, strategic access points on the only waterway between the Black Sea and the oceans of the world, has a long history. It has become even topical in the modern age, as an effect of the increase in economic power and the expansionist tendencies of some states, bearing the imprint of the flourishing or decline of some empires whose fate depended on the strategic situation at the junction of Europe and Asia. However, 86 years ago, in a conciliatory setting, a diplomatic instrument was signed in Montreux, emblematic in the evolution of international law, based on a real spirit of harmonization of political, economic and military interests, which authorized the transit of ships and aircraft through the area of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles straits. Still in force today, the Montreux Convention signed on 20 July 1936, which put Ankara in possession of the keys to the straits, is one of the long-lasting international agreements, limiting the number and tonnage of vessels and, in the case of warships, the duration of their presence in the area, a fact that, in the almost nine decades, has produced effects on the interests of some states, be they Black Sea littoral states or not. The current war in Ukraine, launched on 24 February 2022, brings back in the diplomatic debates the document whose articles relating to the conflict situation have not been invoked since the end of the Second World War, although, over time, interested parties have strongly advocated for the revision of the Montreux Convention."

The two-state impasse in Israel/Palestine—The EU caught between egalitarian norms and expansionist realpolitik

Abstract: In recent years, many academics as well as local actors have started to question the feasibility of a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. Increased Israeli unilateralism, expansionism as well as weak Palestinian institutions have instead pointed toward a “one-state-reality” where Israel is in de facto control over all lands. This in turn reveals a paradox, where international policymakers, most prominently in the EU and the US, and international organizations like the UN, seem determined to insist on a two-state solution, even though all facts on the ground indicate a move away from such a vision where the egalitarian principles inherent in the two-state solution exists in constant tension with expansionist attempts to establish Israeli sovereignty also on Palestinian land. This article unpacks various visions for the future in Israel-Palestine, based on egalitarian principles on the one hand and expansionist ones on the other and display how they current co-exist in a very uneasy relationship. The over-arching aim of the article is to understand how the EU relates to this paradox. We do this in three steps; first we conduct a mapping of visions for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict according to either egalitarian or expansionist principles, where we find one- as well as two-state solutions; second, we conduct a historical analysis on EU positions with regards to the abovementioned principles for solving the conflict, related to other powerful international actors' visions; lastly, we move to an investigation of current developments captured through recent speeches, documents and semi-structured interviews with centrally placed EU staff. Our main conclusion is that even though the EU is determined to hold on to the two state-solution, it however lacks willingness and/or power-resources to push Israel in that direction. Our interviewees seem painfully aware of the lack of viability of the two-state-solution and hence welcome criticism which could push for more egalitarian tendencies in Israel by appealing to its democratic-self-image. Here the current spread of the apartheid narrative among international organizations and an increased international human rights rhetoric emphasizing equal rights for two peoples seem to have left the EU balancing on a tight-rope where they have to choose between standing by status quo, risking supporting ultra-nationalist Israeli sovereignty-aspirations, or criticizing those, instead exposing itself to accusations of antisemitism.

A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872. By Daniel J. Burge

Abstract: Daniel J. Burge’s A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872 aims to adjust the way that historians understand the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Burge argues that historians have fundamentally misunderstood what nineteenth-century Americans meant by “manifest destiny” and that the supporters of this expansionist effort worked well past the 1840s and through the Civil War attempt to gain Canada, Cuba, and Mexico. He argues that when nineteenth-century Americans referred to manifest destiny this is what they meant, and that historians have conflated westward expansion with manifest destiny in a way that makes it seem as though it was a success. Burge also claims that manifest destiny was not a unifying ideology nor was widely supported. Burge begins with the outbreak of the U.S.-Mexican War and traces the objections of northern and southern Whigs as well as some Democrats to the push for obtaining all of Mexico. The various arguments they used, one based on the religious idea that the United States should not expand territorially, and one based on racist notions of Mexican peoples, succeeded in thwarting expansionist interests in obtaining the entire country of Mexico. During the election of 1848, Whigs attacked the Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, for his support of the all-Mexico movement, which helped Zachary Taylor, an anti-expansionist, to be elected president. Burge argues that Taylor’s foreign policy was a clear break from James Polk’s and that he succeeded in stopping the nation from obtaining Cuba and Central American nations. Anti-manifest destiny Whigs branded filibustering to Cuba and later attempts to purchase the island as thieves, claiming that the United States must only gain territory through purchasing it legally. Burge then delves into the development of sectionalist critiques of Manifest Destiny, in which Republicans pushed the idea that this form of expansionism was primarily a southern creation, and anti-expansionists in the South claimed that it was northerners were primarily to blame for the creation of this ideology. During the Civil War, critiques of Manifest Destiny further splintered, as northerners blamed Civil War on land hungry southerners. After the war, Burge focuses on the racialized arguments against the inclusion of Native Alaskans as ways to mock William Seward’s efforts to annex Alaska.

Global Media Framing Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract: On February 24, 2022, global political landscapes were shaken by Russian invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly emphasized that his actions were necessary to defend Russia against perceived Western expansionism, with Ukraine being a prominent example due to its expressed intention to join North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU). This study aims to analyze the framing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine by four media outlets, namely The Jakarta Post, Al Jazeera, Reuters, and The New York Times. A total of 120 news stories published between the 15th of February and the 15th of March 2022 were analyzed using NVivo software. The four media outlets portrayed Russia negatively, describing the country as aggressive and invading Ukraine while also criticizing its political measures. Received: 02 March 2023 / Accepted: 10 June 2023 / Published: 5 July 2023Russia

Governance in Ethiopia Under the Emperors

Abstract: Ethiopia was under the rule of monarchies between 1811 and 1974, a reign long enough to create good value for Ethiopia. The emperors came from eight dynasties, and 86 emperors ruled Ethiopia from these dynasties. Apart from 1936 to 1941, when the Italians occupied Ethiopia, the nation was never under colonial rule. Vices such as concentration of power, inequity, favoritism, expansionist drive, and the marginalization of the population were prevalent during the reign of the emperors. Most of the emperors preferred a positive external reputation over internal respect. They maintained legitimacy despite their negative contributions because of their link to the gods, reinforced by the national religion. In the end, the emperors achieved marginalization and expansion, leading to wars, and draining the nation's natural and human resources. They did not create or leave behind any sustainable and effective legacy, and all they did ended with the termination of monarchical rule in 1974. In other words, in 1974, Ethiopia started from ground zero because what was left by the emperors had no use in the modern nation.

History and politics as if we still lived in the holocene

Abstract: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021), by David Graeber and David Wengrow, is a monumental, boldly revisionist study of the human past from the last ice age to the present. It is geared explicitly toward the present in political terms and seeks to explain how primordial forms of human freedom were lost in ways that resulted in our current structures of violence and domination. The authors explore a vast range of prehistoric, ancient, and non-Western peoples to undermine (neo)evolutionist, stadial theories of long-term human development, particularly any that imply determinism, inevitability, or teleology. If so many peoples in the past were so much freer than we are today, how is it that we got stuck? And are we really as stuck as we think? Graeber and Wengrow successfully undermine the social scientific template of stage-based human development from hunter-gatherers to modern capitalist nation-states, but their book suffers from two major omissions. First, they ignore almost entirely the Anthropocene epoch and show no grasp of its implications for their analysis of the present or prospects for the future. Second, their “new history of humanity” ignores the history that is most relevant to answering their own questions about how we have arrived globally in our current structures of violence and domination: the early modern and modern history of expansionist, colonialist, capitalist, belligerent, imperialist Western European nations and their extensions since the fifteenth century. These two omissions are connected: it is disproportionately the history of the (early) modern West before and after the Industrial Revolution that explains how the planet arrived in the Anthropocene with the “Great Acceleration” around the mid-twentieth century. But heeding this history and its consequences would have undermined the authors’ upbeat political vision about our prospects for the future—essentially, a recycled Enlightenment vision about human self-determination and individual freedom that depends on environmental exploitation as if we still lived in the Holocene. For all its undoubted achievement, The Dawn of Everything neglects the history that is most salient to answering the main questions its own authors pose. What matters most about that history is not that it was inevitable but that it was actual—and that its cumulative consequences remain with us.

Russian Responses, the Invasion, Sanctions and International Law

Abstract: This chapter analyses Russia’s retaliation of Ukraine’s national security interests and intentions to join NATO, the February 2022 invasion, a just war debate concerning Russia’s conduct in the war, international condemnation and sanctions and contravention of international law. This initially includes Russia’s responses to Georgia and the Kremlin’s retaliation of the Maidan Revolution concerning the cessation of Yanukovych’s second term and subsequent annexation of Crimea. Russia protected its principal national interests with the belief that Russian-speaking people of Crimea needed protecting as with the Donbass region. The chapter will move on to the events that unfolded in the lead up to the late February 2022 invasion, international condemnation, and the types of Western sanctions on the Russian economy, Putin’s family and Russian oligarchs. If the Russian economy remains hindered by unprecedented sanctions, it will struggle to fund military expansionism and modernise their armed forces. Subsequently, just war ethics encouraging liberalist efforts to promote international law, namely holding Putin accountable to war crimes at the International Criminal Court (ICC), World Court condemnation of an illegal invasion and United Nations pressure are presented. It will be argued that Russia is not a party of the ICC and retains its permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, whilst cementing its threat of nuclear arsenals and a large army. Moreover, the mid-November 2022 stray missile in Poland, a NATO member, was deemed as an anti-defence S-300 missile by Ukraine and not Russia to arrange consultation under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty and avoid triggering Article 5 (Émile Lambert-Deslandes, “Ukraine War: Why the Missile Incident in Poland is a Warning of Things to Come,” The Conversation, November 23, 2022). Therefore, power politics with a classical and structural realist explanation of international relations explains the war and current situation. The chapter also reflects on constructivism that can partially explain the actions of Putin of de-Nazification, decommunisation and reclaiming lost land by liberating Russian-speaking people in the Donbass region and four areas that held alleged sham referendums.

Looking Back at the Gouzenko Defection

Abstract: Abstract A historical perspective aids our understanding of the present and capacity to anticipate the future. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but particularly its brutality and policy of “constructive destruction,” was shocking and unexpected, but faced with Russia’s relegation from superpower status, it was always a possibility that Putin would emulate Stalin’s determination to maintain Russian influence in the world and challenge the West’s dominance. The risk of recurrent totalitarianism borne of the fear, distrust, and mutual demonization which characterized the ideological rivalry of the early Cold War years has led to a search for historical analogies of relevance to the growing East/West tensions of today that threaten to bring about a second Cold War or limited nuclear conflict. The motivating ideology for Russian expansionism is no longer Communism, but a mythical narrative that promotes Russian nationalism, patriotism, and exceptionalism. Putin’s authoritarian state with its concentration of power and recourse to propaganda, disinformation, and lies is daily looking more Stalinesque and the Cold War question—how to contain Russian ambition—remains to be answered. While the focus has so far been on Stalin’s geopolitical strategy regarding Russia’s near neighbors, two books about the first post–World War II defection in 1945 merit re-visiting for the in-depth analysis and insights they provide into the period and the mindset of participants caught up in that affair. The defector, Igor Gouzenko, a Russian cyber clerk, insisted that Russia was preparing for a Third World War. His revelations precipitated the start of the Cold War.

‘Nazi Agent’ and Development Pioneer: Johann Albrecht von Monroy, National Socialist Europe and Unknown Origins of FAO's Forest Related Development Activities

Abstract: By exploring the career of the German forester Johann Albrecht v. Monroy from the 1920s to the 1950s, this article seeks to further differentiate and expand the historiography on development. It reveals that experts like Monroy who were deeply involved in the National Socialist quest for hegemony in Europe took an active part in shaping the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) forest-related development activities after the Second World War. The article provides two explanations why Monroy became a lauded development pioneer: Firstly, he was a widely acknowledged and well-connected member of a transatlantic expert community that he had helped to shape in the 1920s and 1930s. Secondly, he enormously benefitted from German expansionist policies. In the 1930s, Monroy became a senior official responsible for turning forestry and wood processing industries into a central branch of Germany's war economy. During the war, he was in charge to establish the most modern wood processing plant in Slovakia. Monroy based this project on a specific approach to development that he had elaborated since the mid-1930s and that adapted schemes shaped for colonial contexts to the very special international environment of German-controlled Europe. That Monroy could realize this project in Slovakia turned him into an expert wanted by the FAO due to an almost unrivalled experience.

Conclusion and Outlook: Explaining Economic Nationalism

Abstract: The conclusion draws the historical threads together and explains the causes of economic nationalism. It is most useful to think of nationalists as reacting to economic inequality. If inequality occurs between nations, we are more likely to witness expansionist ideas gain prominence. If inequality occurs within nations and is blamed on integration with the world economy, this is most likely to give rise to isolationist ideas. Both kinds of economic inequality are often accentuated by political inequalities. The motive for catch-up growth becomes more pressing if the nation is seen as politically subordinate within a system of imperial rule. Domestic inequalities are frequently given salience if they correspond to ethnic divisions within society. Based on these insights, the conclusion casts its gaze forward and predicts that both strands of economic nationalism will continue to shape economic policy in the near future.

The Economy

Abstract: Abstract This chapter explains how and why the German economy failed to accomplish the expansionist goals Adolf Hitler set for it. At the outset of his rule in 1933, he dedicated economic policy to satisfying his military’s requirements for conquering a vast, contiguous, and economically self-sufficient empire in central and eastern Europe. Given his nation’s shortage of key natural resources, this programme involved the Nazi regime in constantly improvising measures to manage foreign trade and distribute raw materials, labour, and investments, all of which functioned for a time before foundering on the contradiction between the Reich’s limited capacities and Hitler’s sweeping ambitions and then generating new stopgaps. This spiral culminated in Albert Speer’s and Fritz Sauckel’s enormous programme of applying forced and slave labour to the German war effort, which prolonged the fighting but could not prevent Germany’s collapse in the face of the vastly superior productive capacities of the country’s enemies.

Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers

Abstract: Warfare in Peacetime offers an expansive and elaborated portrait of overseas proxy wars. The structure and substance will prepare observers, analysts, and participants seeking to understand challenges before American and other statesmen. The work helps frame the morass in Syria, with all its foreign links; the contest for influence in Libya, where innumerable hands vie for dominance; the fighting in Yemen, where Houthi Shia organizations backed by Iranian sponsors battle Sunni tribes; and life along the borders of Russian expansionism, where Ukrainians plea for outside assistance, including weapons from Washington. Such ongoing “warfare in peacetime” has a thousand precedents in a dozen ages, including our day, and some of the patterns are explored along with detailed case studies.

International crises and the gray zone: tracing crises through history

Abstract: Chapter 1 offers an introductory overview of the key international crises that have impacted U.S., Chinese, and Russian interests between 1990 and 2020. The analysis starts with the 1990s and the paradigmatic shift brought about by the end of the Cold War. While Russia has emerged from the splintered USSR, and soon got involved in two conventional wars with Chechnya, China has been entangled in an increasingly aggressive confrontation with Taiwan, and started its expansionist policy in the South China Seas. The turmoil has propelled the U.S. to global power status, with military and peacekeeping involvement in the Middle East and the Balkans. The following decade of the 2000s had the three powers dealing with challenges posed by violent non-state actors (VSNA). The 9/11 attacks mobilized the U.S. and its allies, while Russia and China tended to use this near-universally-accepted threat of terrorism to persecute opponents of their respective regimes. This was also the decade when Russia’s increasingly bold influence campaigns had started in Europe, targeting Estonia with a cyberattack in 2007 and Georgia with more conventional military forces in 2008. Finally, the 2010s saw an increasing blurring of the line distinguishing war from peace, forming the backdrop to the concept of gray zone warfare. The chapter reviews the Arab Spring that set the Middle East ablaze and caused a wave of refugees through Europe, the peaking of ISIL, China’s emboldened moves vis-a-vis the Senkaku Islands, and Ukraine’s transition from Euromaidan protests to an increasingly conventional confrontation with Russia.

Inclusive security architecture in the Middle East to counter the US expansionist policy

Abstract: The paper analyzes the historical process of the expansionist policy of world powers in the Middle East, especially at the present stage, which is taking place in the transformation’s context of the global system of international relations. There is a gradual weakening of the influence of the US spatial expansion policy in this region. The author considers the possibilities of the Russian concept of an inclusive security architecture in ensuring stability, peace and order in the Middle East. Also, the author noted that its important component was the potential for expansion, which could open up new horizons for cooperation both at the level of the member states of the structure and in protecting the interests of third countries. The study concluded that this format of the security system could counteract the expansionist policy of the United States, and either to restrain the destructive (for Russia) policies of cross-regional powers in the region, and in that area, meets the global and regional national interests of the Russian Federation.

The Second World and Settler History: Settler Collectives, Land Fulfillment, and Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo

Abstract: Abstract:In the Cold War-era "three worlds" model, the Second World was the socialist world, particularly the Soviet Bloc, that stood opposed to the capitalist West but—unlike the postcolonial Third World—was largely white. However, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, postcolonial critics briefly redeployed the term Second World to denote peripheral settler colonies like Australia. This essay examines the juxtaposition of these two uses of the term "Second World" through a discussion of Katharine Susannah Prichard's 1929 novel Coonardoo and the history of its misrepresentation of Australian Indigenous people. Though Prichard sought to be sympathetic to the Indigenous woman at the center of the novel's plot, Coonardoo, the teleological perspective of her authorial attitude towards the land precludes this sympathy. This essay examines how Prichard's teleological view is connected to socialist-realist attitudes and settler collectives; how Prichard's novel both continues and inflects settler ideology now in the neoliberal era; and how teleological settler histories of the land can no longer presume the continued solidity of the land in the wake of the Anthropocene.

A road not taken? Economic ideology and the articulation of policy alternatives in Irish state economic policymaking, 1948–58

Abstract: Abstract In the midst of a seemingly unending economic crisis, the period 1948–58 saw a dramatic expansion of fiscal policy in Ireland. T. K. Whitaker’s Economic Development is traditionally represented as a landmark departure behind this change from traditional Department of Finance thinking and political inertia, propelled by the perceived Keynesian ideas of his fellow younger economists. However, by assessing the policy positions each actor adopted during major economic events of the period, this study argues that Whitaker’s economic outlook largely aligned with Finance’s, and that Economic Development must be viewed in large part as a reaction to the pre-existing fiscal commitments of the public capital programme. In tandem, it concludes that although the influential younger economists of the period are sometimes described as expansionist Keynesians – such as Patrick Lynch, who in the early part of the decade spearheaded Keynesian-type initiatives such as the capital budget principle – by mid decade their views aligned with the more classical economic outlook of the Department of Finance.

Internationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Empires

Abstract: In Chapter 8, the volume turns to the international dimensions of Montesquieu’s ethical and political thought. We can identify Montesquieu with the cosmopolitan and internationalist vision of the Enlightenment, anchored in the ideal of a common, rational outlook. Yet he understood that this aspiration came with coercion and cost. Universal rationality pushed against the expectation that each people and regime was rooted in particular mores, manners, and dispositions. The costs of cosmopolitan detachment are stamped on the figures of Usbek and Roxanne in Persian Letters, and they are evident in his praise of six “good enough” empires in The Spirit of the Laws. Despite a deserved reputation as a critic of colonialism, Montesquieu’s work also suggests justifications for empire on grounds of survival and sustenance, international security, human rights, the spread of science and enlightenment, and finally, doux commerce, whose global ambitions Montesquieu discerned but never with the naïve, coercionless expectations some readers erroneously drew from his work.