The war on terror in American grand strategy

The 9/11 attacks made the war on terror the central plank of American grand strategy. Yet despite its importance in shaping US policy choices, there has been considerable confusion over how the war on terror relates to foreign policy goals. This article attempts to locate the war on terror within American grand strategy and makes three claims. First, it argues that the Bush administration's approach to the war on terror rests on a false analogy between terrorism and fascism or communism. This has led to misinterpretations of the goals of the war on terror and to a persistent misuse of American power. Second, it suggests that the central purpose of the war on terror should be to de‐legitimize terror as a tactic and to induce states to assume responsibility for controlling terrorists within their borders. American grand strategy should be focused on creating a normative anti‐terror regime with costly commitments by linchpin states—defined as great powers and crucial but endangered allies such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—rather than on conducting regime change against rogue states on the margins of the international system. Success in the war on terror should be measured not by the perceived legitimacy of discrete US policy choices, but by the number of these crucial states who accept the de‐legitimation of terrorism as a core foreign policy principle and act accordingly. Third, it argues that bilateral enforcement of an anti‐terror regime imposes high costs for US power and puts other elements of American grand strategy— including the promotion of democracy and the promotion of human rights—at risk. To reduce these costs and to preserve American power over the long‐term, the US should attempt to institutionalize cooperation in the war on terror and to scale back ambitious policy choices (such as achieving a democratic revolution in the Middle East) which increase the risks of state defection from the anti‐terror regime.     

The shadow of the civil war: A historiography of civil war memory

The memory of the Civil War has become one of the most vibrant and contested subjects in nineteenth-century American history over the past two decades. Studies of Civil War memory potentially can reveal much about the cultural, political, and intellectual world of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. Whereas the Civil War has often been studied in historical isolation, histories of memory thrust off the standard constraints of periodization to emphatically link the Civil War with late nineteenthcentury history. David W Blight's award-winning synthesis Race and Reunion (2001) both indicates the topic's rapid maturation and heightens the need for a historiographical excursion to assess the collective strengths and weaknesses of this burgeoning subfield. The following essay explores the convergence of factors, both within and outside of the historical profession, which have encouraged the boom in memory studies. In addition, it traces the emerging historiography to examine both the creative diversity of the field as well as its common assumptions, insights, and strategic limits.     

The German politics of war: Kunduz and the war in Afghanistan

This article analyses the way in which Germany's participation in the international intervention in Afghanistan has shaped and transformed the country's politics of defence and deriving policies. It argues that in the wake of operational challenges posed by the insurgency in northern Afghanistan since 2007, and in particular the increasing rate of German combat fatalities, established post‐Cold War dogmas of German politics are becoming subject to erosion. Developments in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan, with the tanker bombing of 4 September 2009 as its apex, have had a catalyst function in this process. In particular, strategic, operational and tactical requirements for counterinsurgency operations have had significant politico‐strategic repercussions for the country's defence and security policy more generally. As a result, in recent years the Bundeswehr has begun to undergo a far‐reaching structural process of military adaptation and innovation. The article explains and analyses this phenomenon of political change and military learning in the context of political paralysis.     

Peace without money,war without Americans: challenges for European strategy

Just as the shift of the American strategic focus to Asia and the Pacific forces strategic autonomy upon Europeans, the financial crisis limits their means. In the age of austerity, dispersed efforts and spending on secondary issues have become unaffordable. Prioritizing and making strategic choices have become more important than ever. As no single European state can face all these challenges alone, a joint European strategy must assess where collective foreign and security policies can bring the most added value to the national effort. Through the European Union, Europeans have attempted as much in the 2003 European Security Strategy, but for lack of prioritization, the EU has so far underperformed. Yet the EU does have access to substantial means and possesses all the necessary instruments to pursue a comprehensive strategy. The key to their effective use is a collective European strategic review, starting from the vital interests that all European states have in common. Two priorities stand out: making a new start in Europe's relations with its southern neighbours after the Arab Awakening, and deciding which responsibilities Europeans will assume as security providers outside their borders after the American ‘pivot’ to Asia.     

Italians at war: war and experience in Fascist Italy

This article examines Fascist violence in war from the perspective of the strategies employed by the Italian army. Focusing on the military’s use of violence from the re-conquest of Libya to the civil war in Italy, the article argues that Fascism systematically employed forms of violence that were both typical and original.     

The trauma of war rape: A comparative view on the Bosnian conflict and the Greek civil war

This paper explores the practice and the political context of war rapes in the former Yugoslavia (1992-1995) and in the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). It argues that conceptions about accountability and expected gender roles may lead social actors to commit atrocities that transgress the moral codes of their own society, while condemning their victims to silence. On the other hand, a change in the political context may undermine the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators and ultimately lead war rape victims to break their silence and bear witness. This argument is illustrated by a detailed analysis of one particular interview, in which a woman raped during the Greek Civil War decided to break her silence fifty years after the event. The interview material offers the opportunity to explore the effects of trauma and the multiple ways in which war rape victims may try to cope with past trauma and give meaning to a shattered life.     

A war in search of a rationale

The recent publications of memoirs by former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith have reopened the debate over the origins of the Iraq War. Both men—who were widely blamed for the ‘intelligence failure’ on weapons of mass destruction and the exaggerated connection between Al‐Qaeda and Iraq—purport to set the record straight about what really happened inside the Bush administration during the run‐up to the war. Yet, both men have actually produced books marked by a strange combination of self‐pity and disingenuousness. This article looks at their attempts at self‐justification in light of the growing evidence that the decision to invade was made in mid‐2002; if true, their arguments that they were participating in a genuine policy debate rather than a search for a rationale become problematic. Rather than exculpating themselves, their memoirs instead serve as damning indictments of both men, showing how Tenet and Feith enabled the President's decision to wage war on Iraq as a matter of choice rather than necessity.     

解放战争时期香港《华商报》的历史地位和特点

1946年复刊后的香港《华商报》是中共在香港创办的一份有重大影响的报纸,它不仅是宣传中共的坚强舆论阵地,也是联络统战工作的联络站。它内容丰富,涉及到政治、军事、外交、经济、文化等多方面,全面反映了解放战争时期国内外生动的历史画卷。它以其独特的方式积极探索了在资本主义条件下办社会主义报纸的特点,为今天媒体的换位思考可提供某些经验。     

Infidels and miscreants: love and war in Afghanistan

This article reviews the fruits of a sustained collaboration between the writer and reporter Sebastian Junger and the photographer and filmmaker Tim Hetherington, embedded with the US Army in Afghanistan: Junger's meditation, War; Hetherington's photographs, Infidel; and the documentary film they co‐directed, Restrepo. Taken together, these works offer perhaps the most significant insight into the nature of combat, and combat effectiveness, yet to emerge in the era of the ‘war on terror’. Remarkably enough, their fundamental theme is love.     

Anthropology and the Iraq war: An uncomfortable engagement

The Iraq war has preoccupied anthropologists. However, this has not materialized in panels dedicated to independent study of Iraq at annual conferences at our major professional associations. In the US, we have been predominantly preoccupied with the implications of intelligence gathering for our profession. The author considers some of the differences between our dealing with the Iraq war presently, and the successful campaigns against the Vietnam war of the 60s. He concludes that there is scope for anthropologists to learn from the past and to make a renewed concerted effort to, independent from government demands on their skills, inform and change public opinion and ultimately government policy.     

Childhood in the shadow of war: filled with work and play

This study was focused on war-time childhood. The target period covers the war years 1939–1945 and the years of post-war reconstruction. The research was based on memories of 13 participants who lived in the countryside in northern Finland during the Second World War. The purpose of the study was to find out what children's everyday life was like during the war. According to the results, children did play regardless of the war situation. Children also participated in household work actively. By highlighting children's experiences and perspectives, this study provided important information about children's survival during war time. The study also helps understanding the effects of wars from children's point of view.     

General Roatta's war against the partisans in Yugoslavia: 1942

During General Mario Roatta's tenure as commander of the Italian 2nd Army in Yugoslavia, he faced a mounting Communist insurgency. To defeat the partisan forces of Tito, he resorted to proactive politics and a strategy of counter-insurgency. Owing to Italian military weakness and his army's lack of training in guerrilla warfare, Roatta was not averse to enlisting the services of Orthodox Serbs in Croatia, who the previous year had asked for Italian protection after a fearful massacre had been unleashed against them by Mussolini's handpicked ruler in Zagreb, the Croatian Usta?a leader Ante Paveli?. Against the wishes of the Fascist government in Rome, Roatta armed Serbs (called ?etniks) because they agreed to assist the Italian legions in fighting the partisans, their common ideological foe. But as Yugoslavia descended into civil war – one triggered by the Axis invasion – Roatta paid a price for his freelance pro-Serb politicking by alienating Zagreb, irritating the Germans, and dismaying his superiors in Rome. Italian policy was reduced to a tug-of-war between the Fascist empire-builders surrounding Mussolini and the military command in Yugoslavia, and Roatta became enmeshed in a cobweb of intrigues involving Croats, ?etniks and Germans. Apart from political manoeuvring, Roatta, in the ineluctable necessity of defeating the partisans, devised a detailed strategy of counter-insurgency. On 1 March 1942, he circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘3C’ among his commanders that spelled out military reform and draconian measures to intimidate the Slav populations into silence by means of summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages. By his reckoning, military necessity knew no choice, and law required only lip service. Roatta's merciless suppression of partisan insurgency was not mitigated by his having saved the lives of both Serbs and Jews from the persecution of Italy's allies Germany and Croatia. Under his watch, the 2nd Army's record of violence against the Yugoslav population easily matched the German. Tantamount to a declaration of war on civilians, Roatta's ‘3C’ pamphlet involved him in war crimes.