The causes and consequences of Beslan: A commentary on Gerard Toal's placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

Gerard Toal has written a very important work placing the terrorist attack in Beslan into a geopolitical context. Toal's analysis emphasizes two themes, the need to place Beslan in a political context and the parallels between the Russian government's reaction to the attack and the Bush administration's reaction to the September 11 attacks. In this response, I seek to make these two themes more explicit and also to focus on one area that is somewhat neglected in Toal's analysis: namely, the factors that made the terrorist attack in Beslan possible. In doing so, I turn away from focusing exclusively on geopolitics by bringing in some of the socio-economic and ideological factors that made the North Caucasus ripe for the explosion of terrorist attacks that occurred in the first half of this decade. I also show how changes in government policies eventually brought about the decline of large-scale terrorist attacks in the region. In doing so, I hope to make the point that any analysis of a spectacular terrorist attack such as Beslan has to take into account not just geopolitics, but also the socio-economic conditions that made it possible and the government policies that allowed it to happen.     

Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

The aftermaths of terrorist spectacles are intensely consequential moments in the making of geopolitical meaning. This paper develops a critical geopolitical account of the ways in which key actors involved in the terrorist incident at School Number 1 in Beslan North Ossetia constructed its meaning and justified their actions. The event is examined from three perspectives: the terrorist's Beslan, the Kremlin's Beslan and the contested meaning of Beslan among Ossetians and others in the North Caucasus. Multiple sources are utilized in the construction of the account: an English language archive of Russian reporting on the event, accounts of the siege, statements by key protagonists, elite interviews in North Ossetia, and the results of a survey question in North Ossetia and the North Caucasus on Beslan. The paper examines the construction of blame by the various actors and relates it to indiscriminate geographies, sweeping acts of abstraction whose homogenizing effects make (counter)terrorist violence possible.     

The vertikal: power and authority in Russia

Power and authority in Russia are traditionally seen to reside with the president. Such an understanding was emphasized during the eight years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, from 2000 to 2008, as he sought to centralize power, strengthen the state and establish a strong vertical of power to implement policy. This article examines the nature of this power and authority in the light of the tandem, the ruling arrangement between current President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. While acknowledging the central importance of Vladimir Putin in Russian political life, the article argues that emphasis on his role draws too much attention away from the leadership team that he has shaped with Medvedev. This team takes shape in formal institutional structures such as the Security Council, which has become an increasingly important group as a reservoir of experience and authority. It also takes shape in an informal network that stretches across state and business boundaries. Although there are some tensions in the network, this team ensures broad policy continuity. Furthermore, the article questions Putin's success in establishing a vertical of power, and the authority of both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. The analysis explores evidence that suggests that, despite the appointment of loyal personnel in this vertical of power, presidential instructions, orders and personnel commands often remain incompletely and tardily carried out or even unfulfilled. In essence, therefore, although many have suggested a split within the leadership, particularly between Medvedev and Putin, the article suggests that the more important splits are horizontal ones between different layers of authority. Thus, a process of direct control is necessary, whereby the most senior officials are obliged personally to oversee the implementation of their instructions. The article concludes by suggesting a reconsideration of our terms of reference for Russian politics, replacing the tandem with the team, and introducing ‘manual control’.     

Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis

This article explores explanations of Russia's unyielding alignment with the Syrian regime of Bashar al‐Assad since the Syrian crisis erupted in the spring of 2011. Russia has provided a diplomatic shield for Damascus in the UN Security Council and has continued to supply it with modern arms. Putin's resistance to any scenario of western‐led intervention in Syria, on the model of the Libya campaign, in itself does not explain Russian policy. For this we need to analyse underlying Russian motives. The article argues that identity or solidarity between the Soviet Union/Russia and Syria has exerted little real influence, besides leaving some strategic nostalgia among Russian security policy‐makers. Russian material interests in Syria are also overstated, although Russia still hopes to entrench itself in the regional politics of the Middle East. Of more significance is the potential impact of the Syria crisis on the domestic political order of the Russian state. First, the nexus between regional spillover from Syria, Islamist networks and insurgency in the North Caucasus is a cause of concern—although the risk of ‘blowback’ to Russia is exaggerated. Second, Moscow rejects calls for the departure of Assad as another case of the western community imposing standards of political legitimacy on a ‘sovereign state’ to enforce regime change, with future implications for Russia or other authoritarian members of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia may try to enshrine its influence in the Middle East through a peace process for Syria, but if Syria descends further into chaos western states may be able to achieve no more in practice than emergency coordination with Russia.     

An Exceptional Response? Security,Development and Civil Society in Spanish Policy after 11‐M

This article considers the ways in which Spanish state institutions responded to the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004 in the context of the global ‘War on Terror’. It examines three inter‐related arenas of Spanish policy after 9/11 in which security and civil society are invoked in ways that impact upon the country's development agenda toward its southern Mediterranean partners. The first relates to Spain's external relations with its North African neighbours, and in particular the place of migration in shaping these relations over the last decade. The second concerns Spain's political relations with the representative organizations of its own Muslim populations. A third area of analysis pertains to the juridical‐institutional reactions of the state to the 11 March attacks: how have public authorities and civil society been affected and refashioned in the face of jihadist terrorism on the peninsula? The author argues that in each of these domains, the post‐9/11 context generally, and the 11 March attacks in particular, have elicited a securitization of civil society, which has in turn been associated with the country's international relations and domestic politics. Such securitization, however, has only been partially successful, thus vindicating the continuation of ‘politics as usual’ among Spain's state officials and its civil society.     

Russian Agriculture During Putin's First Term and Beyond

An American specialist on Russian agriculture surveys developments during Putin's first term in office, as well as the challenges that loom for the future. The focus is on how economic growth more broadly, and agrarian reform policy more specifically, have led to increasing agricultural output and improved financial stability of farms, with emphasis on the large-farm sector (former state and collective farms). Among the at least partially successful stabilization measures described in some detail are development of reliable sources of farm credit, debt restructuring and cancellation, greater fulfillment of state budget obligations, state intervention in grain markets, and trade protectionism. The paper also assesses the agenda for increasing Russian agriculture's global competitiveness in Putin's second term. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F13, O18, Q10. 3 tables, 61 references.     

Before September: A History of Counter-terrorism in New Zealand

The events of 11 September 2001 have prompted many states throughout the world to reinvigorate and strengthen their focus on countering terrorism. Surprisingly New Zealand, arguably a relatively unlikely target for terrorist action, already had in place a very comprehensive set of counter-measures both prior to this more recent event and even before the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in the mid-1980s. This article investigates why and how a state as 'secure' as New Zealand has purposely created a comprehensive set of counter-terrorist measures over the years. Reasons of caution and prudence in the domestic arena are perhaps sufficient, but this article further asserts that various other 'international' elements have also been, and will continue to be, major factors in the development of legislative and substantive counter-terrorist measures in New Zealand.     

Islam,Territory, and Contested Space in Post-Soviet Russia

A noted American specialist on nationalism and identity politics in the former USSR reviews the political, institutional, and territorial complexities identified with the Muslim minority in the Russian Federation. Coverage includes the size and distribution of Muslim communities, the government's approach to the diverse adherents of Islam (including Wahhabis), fragmentation of Islamic institutions, and federal policies before and after the October 2004 terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, North Ossetia. Considerable attention is devoted to differences between Islamo-internationalism and Islamo-nationalism in Chechnya, as well as similarities and differences among approaches to Muslim affairs in Russia and other parts of Europe. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O15, O18, Z13. 1 table, 53 references.     

‘An enemy at the gates’ or ‘from victory to victory’? Russian foreign policy

Russian foreign policy reflects an evolving balance between vulnerability and opportunity. For much of President Putin's second term, Russia has been on the defensive. Despite increasing economic strength, observed in greater activity and an apparently more confident rhetorical stance, Russian diplomacy reflected a sense of vulnerability in Moscow. Indeed, diplomacy was largely inward looking: on the one hand it was a tool with which to unite and mobilize the Russian population rather than confront the West; on the other hand, it was a means of preventing external interference in Russian domestic affairs. On another level, Moscow sees an international situation destabilized by the unilateral actions of the US and an attempt by the ‘western alliance’ to assert and export its value system. But Moscow also believes that the international situation has reached a moment of transition, one which presents an opportunity for a Russia that lays claim to a global role. Russian foreign policy reflects a broad consensus in Moscow that asserts Russia's status as a leading power with legitimate interests. This moment of opportunity coincides with Moscow's desire to rethink the results of the post‐Cold War period and to establish Russia as a valid international player. Continuing constraints and recognition that its domestic priorities proscribe Moscow from seeking confrontation with the West, which it cannot afford. Nonetheless, the attempt to establish the legitimacy of sovereign democracy as an international model of development appears to represent an important development in how Russia will approach wider European politics.     

Ten years on: Obama's war on terrorism in rhetoric and practice

Ten years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC on September 11, 2001, the United States remains embroiled in a long‐term struggle with what George W. Bush termed the existential threat of international terrorism. On the campaign trail, his successor as US President, Barack Obama, promised to reboot the ‘war on terror’. He claimed that his new administration would step back from the rhetoric and much of the Bush administration policy, conducting a counterterrorism campaign that would be more morally acceptable, more focused and more effective—smarter, better, nimbler, stronger. This article demonstrates, however, that those expecting wholesale changes to US counterterrorism policy misread Obama's intentions. It argues that Obama always intended to deepen Bush's commitment to counterterrorism while at the same time ending the ‘distraction’ of the Iraq War. Rather than being trapped by Bush's institutionalized construction of a global war on terror, the continuities in counterterrorism can be explained by Obama's shared conception of the imperative of reducing the terrorist threat to the US. The article assesses whether Obama has pursued a more effective counterterrorism policy than his predecessor and explores how his rhetoric has been reconstituted as the actions of his policy have unfolded. By addressing his policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, Guantánamo Bay and torture, the uses of unmanned drone attacks and domestic wire‐tapping, this article argues that Obama's ‘war’ against terrorism is not only in keeping with the assumptions and priorities of the last ten years but also that it is just as problematic as that of his predecessor.     

Contesting Putin's nation‐building: the ‘Muslim other’ and the challenge of the Russian ethno‐cultural alternative

This article explains the crystallisation of a new Russian national discourse, shaped by a challenge posed to Putin's statist non‐ethnic national model by a popularly formed ethno‐cultural alternative, constructed through negation of the ‘Muslim other’. The article describes this new and previously overlooked phenomenon of Russian nationalism and explicates the social mechanism behind its formation. The article concludes that when rampant corruption exists, generating a breakdown of legal order, the ‘other’ is defined through behaviour that deviates from accepted local norms, while the contrasting normative ‘general public’ is defined as ‘Russian’. Such group definitions mean that the current process of Russian grass‐roots exclusive national consolidation is based predominantly on culturally based behavioural codes, rather than on mere ethnic or religious affiliation, as is widely believed. Additionally, a conceptual landmark discourse shift from the question of Russia's mere plausibility as a nation‐state to a focus on its ongoing definition is demonstrated.     

Beslan and the study of violence

“Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan” by Gerard Toal (in this issue) is an insightful analysis of the terrorist attack on Beslan's School Number 1, demonstrating how the various actors involved in, and affected by, the attack made sense of it. Toal documents that many of the frames used to justify or interpret the attack employ “indiscriminate blaming.” This commentary raises three points. First, it places the lecture within the recent trend of disaggregating the study of civil war and ethnic conflict. Second, it comments on the lecture's assumption that there is a causal link between indiscriminate blaming and violence. Third, it inquires about the sources of indiscriminate blaming.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

A forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East: US democracy promotion and the ‘war on terror’

Following the 11 September terrorist attacks, a belief has emerged that one of the root causes of Islamic extremism lies in the repressive nature of the regimes that populate the Middle East. Thus the spread of democracy has become a major component of the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ Previously dismissed as Wilsonian idealism, the promotion of democracy is now considered a strategic necessity to address the threat posed by terrorism. Despite the significant role democracy promotion has played in the present foreign policy of the United States, the focus has tended to be on the more controversial policies of preventive warfare and coalitions of the willing. The purpose of this article is to help rectify this imbalance by examining the role the promotion of democracy plays within the current administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. It considers the logic behind America's ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle East as well as the likelihood of this strategy succeeding.     

Putin's Russia: shaping a ‘grand strategy’?

Since the middle of the last decade the Russian leadership has conducted a strategic overhaul, publishing a cascade of new concepts, strategies and doctrines that attempt to frame plans in a long‐term horizon to 2020 and beyond. Following Vladimir Putin's re‐election in 2012, a series of presidential instructions and new plans have been published to update this overhaul. This article examines this commitment to strategic planning and whether it is tantamount to a grand strategy. The article explores the various understandings of Russian strategy in the existing literature, before sketching a definition of grand strategy. It suggests that Moscow has shaped a broad horizon and made some progress towards achieving the goals it has set out. But a grand strategy is more than formulating plans, it is also the coordination of relevant organizations and resources—‘conducting the orchestra’—to execute effectively the plans. The article thus concludes by exploring the difficulties Moscow faces: on the one hand, an evolving and competitive international context and, on the other, a domestic context burdened by a heavy inheritance from the USSR and contemporary Russian problems. Taken all together, these suggest that although Moscow is committed to strategic planning, a grand strategy remains a work in progress.     

Imperial nationalism as the driver behind Russia's invasion of Ukraine

The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine are to be found in two areas. The first is the revival of Tsarist imperial nationalist and White Russian émigré nationalist denials of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Russian imperial nationalists believe the eastern Slavs constitute a pan Russian nation of Great Russians, Little Russians and White Russian branches of one Russian nation. The second is the cult of the Great Patriotic War and Joseph Stalin and the revival of Soviet era discourse on Ukrainian Nazis (i.e., nationalists). A Ukrainian nationalist in the Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin's Russia is any Ukrainian who seeks a future for his/her country outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Russian World and who upholds an ethnic Ukrainian (rather than a Little Russian) identity. The Russian World is the new core of the Eurasian Economic Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin's alternative to the EU's Eastern Partnership. In the contemporary domain, Ukrainian nationalists are Nazi's irrespective of their language preference or political beliefs and if they do not accept they are Little Russians. Putin's invasion goal of denazification is a genocidal goal to eradicate the ‘anti-Russia’ that has allegedly been nurtured by Ukrainian nationalists and the West.     

The last refuge of a scoundrel: patriotism,militarism and the Russian national idea*

In a nation‐state, where ethnic and territorial borders coincide, patriotism may easily have an exclusivist‐nationalist component, and be used to serve the goals of politicians hoping to mobilise the population for destructive goals. In a multinational state like Russia, the militaristic patriotism that Yeltsin's and Putin's administrations promote can also carry that risk. The Russian state leadership's use of a militaristic patriotism as a means to generate popular support risks unleashing ethnic chauvinism and the military domination of civilian institutions. Such phenomena cast doubt on the prospects for Russia's state‐building process to proceed along liberal democratic lines. Non‐governmental organisations, such as Russia's Committee of Soldiers' Mothers , however, have devised an alternative vision of patriotism, relying on rule of law and the observance of civil rights, and thereby hold out a slim hope for reframing Russian patriotism and building a peaceful democracy.