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.     

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.     

‘The enemy is at the gate’:1 Russia after Beslan

This article examines the changes that have taken place in Russian domestic and foreign policy after the Beslan hostage crisis of early September 2004. The terrorist attack has had two immediate effects in Moscow: it shook new convictions about the apparent consolidation of Russia and it reinforced old beliefs in the need to strengthen the Russian state. In order to analyse recent changes, the article discusses the policy framework put in place during Putin's first term to strengthen the state and to build a more favourable external environment. Putin's response since the Beslan attack is founded on the premise that the only effective response to the terrorist threat is to reinforce the 'organism' of the state to withstand further attacks and to manage their consequences. The article examines the limits of the policy framework in place since 2000, where a circular logic is at work, in which terrorist attacks produce greater efforts by the government to strengthen the state but with measures that do little to prevent further attack, which, in turn, stimulate a further securitization of policy. The terrorist attack at Beslan has accelerated this logic, which sits uneasily with Putin's twin vision since 2000 of domestic modernization to revitalize the country and external engagement to create a predictable external setting.     

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.     

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the South Caucasus Republics

Deep geopolitical changes in the South Caucasus have considerably influenced the relationships of Iran and the three republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Geographical location and strategic significance have made this region one of the most important in the world. Because of its historical affinities and socio-cultural links with the region's peoples, the Islamic Republic of Iran has expanded political-economic cooperation with them. The active presence of regional and trans-regional actors has directly affected this relation. This article mainly seeks to examine Iran's relations with the South Caucasus republics, considering the opportunities created since their independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.     

The Regional Context of Islam in Russia: Diversities along the Volga

A noted investigator of Russia's ethnic and geopolitical affairs presents case studies of six regions (in aggregate home to ca. 5.8 million Muslims, or over one-third of Russia's total) within the Volga and North Caucasus districts in an effort to demonstrate the importance of the regional context in which Russia's Muslims reside. Drawing upon field interviews (through March 2006) and information from local media, the author shows how the milieu in which Islam is practiced diverges markedly across regional boundaries. The diversities are traced to location, history, ethnocultural affiliation, number of adherents, educational resources, and relations between Islamic leaders and government officials. Also analyzed is the role of the two major competing spiritual centers of Islam in Russia, and the sense of regional self-identity. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H70, Z10, Z12. 1figure, 28 references.     

Japan's global environmentalism: rhetoric and reality

The 1992 Earth Summit marked the emergence of a new type of global environmentalism in which nation states increasingly sought to represent themselves as key environmental actors. Since the early 1990s, Japan has attempted to position itself rhetorically as a global environmental leader. This rhetoric must be compared to Japan's international environmental impacts, which are considerable, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Japan's domestic environmental situation is evaluated, and five key areas of international environmental impacts are discussed: official development assistance, foreign direct investment, deforestation, overfishing, and the promotion of high technology. Motivations for Japan's use of global environmentalist rhetoric including its domestic political environment, geopolitical goals, geoeconomic motivations, and the increasing globalization of the Japanese economy are analyzed. The spread of the Japanese model of development is linked to Asia's continuing environmental crises.     

Experimental territoriality: Assembling the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea

This paper examines the interactions of sovereignty and political economy that shape North Korea's Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC)—an economic zone jointly operated by North and South Korea. Drawing on contemporary literatures concerning sovereignty, territoriality, and sites of political economic experimentation in East Asia, we argue that the KIC represents an experimental form of territoriality: one that is particularly volatile due to its unique geopolitical location where interaction among the various actors that compose it periodically shuts down or threatens to suspend the project. This volatility cannot be reduced to the structure of the North Korean regime alone, however. Rather, it must be situated within the continuation of a framework of enmity on the Korean peninsula as well as the ethical and political conundrums raised by the largely capitalist nature of the KIC as a form of inter-Korean economic cooperation.     

Violence and conflict in the Russian North Caucasus

Since 2006 there has been a significant reduction in the level of fighting in the Russian republic of Chechnya between federal troops and Chechen rebels, indicating a substantial weakening of the insurgency. However, violence in the region has not entirely subsided; indeed, it has been spreading to neighbouring regions in the North Caucasus. Today, a loose network of formally autonomous violent groups, or Islamic jamaats, has developed throughout the North Caucasus, primarily in the Muslim republics of Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachaevo‐Cherkessia and Kabardino‐Balkaria. Islamic ideals seem to guide and inspire much of the terrorist violence, although they are intermingled with deep nationalist sentiments, especially among rebel groups in Chechnya. However, the intricacies of the violence in the North Caucasus are much more complex, and are only partially related to the spread of radical Islam and separatist aspirations. Other underlying factors, such as the perpetuation of discredited and corrupt ruling elites, the persistence of severe economic hardship, youth unemployment and social alienation, and the absence of proper and effective channels of political expression are also driving the violence. Although hardly ever reported by the western media, events in the North Caucasus have significant implications for Europe and the wider world. The enlargement of the European Union and the inclusion of Ukraine and the three South Caucasian states into the EU neighbourhood policy have brought these countries and the adjacent areas of the North Caucasus closer to the EU. As a result, events in the North Caucasus are no longer the sole remit of countries in the region. There is a risk that instability and violence in the North Caucasus may spread into areas that are of growing significance not only to Europe, but also to the United States and the Atlantic alliance.     

Russia resurgent? Moscow's campaign to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’

Russia's military incursion into Georgia in August 2008 and formal recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia raise fundamental questions about Russian regional policy, strategic objectives and attitudes to the use of armed force. The spectacle of maneouvre warfare on the periphery of Europe could form a watershed in post‐Cold War Russian relations with its neighbourhood and the wider international community. The speed and scale with which Russia's initial ‘defensive’ intervention to ‘coerce Georgia to peace’ led to a broad occupation of many Georgian regions focuses attention on the motivations behind Russian military preparations for war and the political gains Moscow expected from such a broad offensive. Russia has failed to advance a convincing legal case for its operations and its ‘peace operations’ discourse has been essentially rhetorical. Some Russian goals may be inferred: the creation of military protectorates in South Ossetia and Abkhazia; inducing Georgian compliance, especially to block its path towards NATO; and creating a climate of uncertainty over energy routes in the South Caucasus. Moscow's warning that it will defend its ‘citizens’ (nationals) at all costs broadens the scope of concerns to Russia's other neighbour states, especially Ukraine. Yet an overreaction to alarmist scenarios of a new era of coercive diplomacy may only encourage Russian insistence that its status, that of an aspirant global power, be respected. This will continue to be fuelled by internal political and psychological considerations in Russia. Careful attention will need to be given to the role Russia attributes to military power in pursuing its revisionist stance in the international system.     

Consuming geopolitics and feeling maritime territoriality: The case of China's patriotic tourism in the South China Sea

This paper develops the concept of territorial socialisation and explores the process and effect of tourism in China's maritime territorialisation of the South China Sea. The research demonstrates the mutual constitution of tourism and territorialisation and suggests that tourism is playing an increasingly important role in everyday contexts to socialise individuals into national-territorial thinking. However, tourism alone does not decidedly stoke strong territorial nationalism, instead it produces uneven bordering or territorialisation effects at the personal level. Tourism practices, tourist agency, and the distinct wet ontology of the sea complicate the state maritime territorialisation process. The research also shows that the Chinese tourists are pragmatic, calculative geopolitical actors. Their geopolitical experiences through tourism are connected to, and embedded in, the broad geopolitical realities of China's rising and unjust international orders, while informed by official territorial rhetoric and traditional political culture.     

Policing the near abroad: Russian foreign policy in the South Caucasus

This article tries to understand Russia's policies towards the South Caucasus and answer the question of whether there is a tension between Russia's interests and policies. An attempt is made to identify Russia's strategic interests in the region and the crucial factors that shape Russian policies. Based on the assumption that today's Russia gives de facto support to the secessionist regimes in Georgia, the author attempts to explain what the Kremlin's motives are in supporting the secessionist regimes. The author investigates whether Russian support for the separatist regimes in the South Caucasus is a reaction to the foreign policy orientation of the parent states or a part of Russia's security political interests. On the one hand, supporting instability in the South Caucasus cannot be a part of the Kremlin's strategic interests, because that can pose a threat to the North Caucasus. On the other hand, however, Russian policies are not designed to achieve long-term stability in the South Caucasus, and controlled instability seems to suit the Kremlin. Why Russia vies for coercive hegemony and supports secessionism are the central questions of this article.     

The Brazilian Green Revolution

This article analyzes the critical geopolitics of knowledge production in Brazil during the 20th century. It offers a critical appraisal of recent calls to decolonize political geography by locating the role played by actors and institutions in the Global South within the broader narrative of the Green Revolution. Historical accounts of the Green Revolution have only recently started to incorporate perspectives of and attribute agency to actors in the Global South. However, Brazil has largely been left out of the geographical scope of the Green Revolution. This article focuses on U.S.-Brazilian geopolitical relations behind an effort to reproduce the U.S. model of higher education, rural extension and agricultural research in Brazil. I argue that the confluence of Brazil's geopolitical importance with opportunities for foreign investment in its agricultural sector brought together U.S. and Brazilian experts and expertise to modernize Brazilian agriculture. The case of transnational soybean research illustrates the importance of this relationship in transforming Brazil's agricultural sector and limiting alternatives. This article offers an account of how the geopolitics of knowledge production shape the long-term institutional legacies of national research institutions.     

Ephemeral geopolitics: Tracing the role of refugees in Syria's transnational opposition

It has become common to read that Syria's conflict has become a “globalized civil war,” with the understanding that states have become the key actors shaping its dynamics. While in great part true, such an understanding overlooks the significance of transnational networks in shaping the conflict and, more importantly, how these networks and states have been intimately connected from its early stages. This paper explores how a network of Syrian refugees that I dub the “coordinating class” performed the work of binding together the heterogeneous assemblage that was Syria's opposition movement. Drawing on assemblage theory and two years of multi-sited fieldwork, the paper explores three practices through which this emergent network linked the spaces of exile to the warzone of Syria's opposition-held “Liberated Territories.” In doing so, the paper argues that in Syria's conflict, refugees' geopolitical agency was highly layered, provisional, and ephemeral, yet still shaped the wider geopolitics of the war.     

“Only Strong States Can Survive in Turkey's Geography”: The uses of “geopolitical truths” in Turkey

Following Critical Geopoliticians' re-formulation of geopolitics as discourse, this article historically traces, politically contextualizes, and empirically analyzes the linguistic practices as found in myriad actors' formal geopolitical writings and public articulations in Turkey. It shows how the production and dissemination of a particular understanding of geopolitics as a “scientific” perspective on statecraft, and the military as an actor licensed to craft state policies (by virtue of its mastery over geopolitical knowledge) has allowed the military to play a central role in shaping domestic political processes. Subsequent to the erosion of bi-partisan consensus on foreign policy from the mid-1960s onwards, civilian actors also began to tap geopolitics but as a foreign policy tool. By the end of the 1990s, geopolitics had become rooted in the discourses of both military and civilian actors shaping (for “better” or for “worse”) Turkey's “foreign” relations with the European Union as well as “domestic” political processes.     

Cardinal Markers of Finland's Identity Politics and National Identity

This paper analyzes geopolitical themes prevailing in dominant sectors of the Finnish government and society that have shaped Finland's national identity from the early 19th century to the present. The focus is on the ways cardinal markers (compass directions) have become geopolitical and identity markers. Notions of "West," "Between East and West," "Neither West nor East," and "North" have been used both to position Finland on the world political map and to forge a Finnish national identity. The influence of Russia and Karelians are examined at some length as part of the eastern dimension of Finnish identity. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: O52, Z13. 1 figure, 1 table, 94 references.     

The decline and shifting geography of violence in Russia’s North Caucasus, 2010-2016

Abstract

A spatial analysis of the geography of insurgency in the North Caucasus of Russia from 1999 through the end of 2016, focused on the period since 2010, corroborates other work on the incidence of violence in the region. A sharp drop in the absolute number of conflict events over the past half-decade occurred as violence diffused from Chechnya in the mid-2000s and is attributable to a range of domestic and international factors. Domestically, the decline is broadly linked to the securitization of the region around the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the return to the use of the Kremlin power vertical as a system of political management after an interlude focused on economic development as a mitigation strategy, and the wider adoption of harsh management tactics at the regional and republic scales. Internationally, potential insurgents have left Russia to fight in the Middle East and Ukraine. Using a conflict-event data-set (N = 18,960) from August 1999 through the end of 2016 and focusing on the period since the creation of the North Caucasus Federal District in January 2010, the paper identifies a set of notable trends within the decline and shift in violence. Key findings include a percentage increase in arrests carried out by Russian security services, a decline in retaliation across conflict actors, and the failure of federal subsidies to contribute to declines in violence in the region. The long-term prospects for continued insurgency in the North Caucasus, specifically in light of the collapse of the Islamic State and Russia’s domestic challenges, remain uncertain and should acknowledge the recent decline in violence in the region.     

Neo‐Colonialism in South–South Relations? The Case of China and North Korea

The past decade has seen the rapid expansion of economic ties between China and North Korea, leading to questions of whether this emerging relationship resembles neo‐colonialism or a more positive form of South–South cooperation. This article argues that China's engagement is driven in the first instance by strategic considerations, namely the maintenance of the geopolitical status quo on the Korean peninsula. However, North Korea has also become increasingly important in terms of Beijing's aims of revitalizing its north‐eastern region, and as such, economic relations are becoming increasingly market‐led. Although this mode of engagement bears similarities with China's engagement elsewhere in the developing world, North Korea's catastrophic economic decline in the 1990s largely preceded the more recent revival of relations with China. We argue therefore that bilateral relations between the two countries cannot usefully be regarded as ‘neo‐colonial’ since North Korea is receiving much needed trade and investment from China within the context of broader international isolation. As such, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to how geopolitical specificities influence the manner in which South–South cooperation shapes the possibilities of development, and that the dichotomous terrain of the existing debate between optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints is unhelpful.     

Spiritual geopolitics of Georgia's territorial integrity

This paper represents a study of the geopolitical reasoning of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) and its leader Patriarch Ilia II regarding the question of Georgia's territorial integrity. Does the GOC's territorial discourse complement or challenge Georgia's territorial nationalism? The empirical analysis of the geopolitical discourses of Patriarch Ilia II in the early 1990s and in the wake of the 2008 August (Russia-Georgia) War shows a complicated relationship between spiritual and secular geopolitical discourses on Georgia's territorial integrity. Ilia's spiritual geopolitics is neither dissident nor entirely complementary. The Patriarch's definition of Georgia's territorial integrity eschews the broadly accepted formulation of “Russian occupation” within Georgia and in its place, insufficient faith and religiosity within the Georgian society take a more prominent place in the explanation of the problem's origins. Ilia II defines the religion and the GOC as the unifying factor, spiritually, territorially, and politically, of the rival parties and alienated peoples and territories. The church's canonical territoriality, rather than the state's sovereign territoriality, plays the key object of concern in the Patriarch's geopolitical discourse. However, Ilia II frames this narrow institutional interest of the church as the basis for the nation's territorial unification. By advocating more narrowly for the GOC's canonical jurisdiction across the entire disputed territories, rather than actively embracing secular anti-Russian geopolitical narratives, the church simultaneously stands outside of the territorial conflict, taking a seemingly neutral position, and reinforces the territorial claim of the Georgian state. By distinguishing and problematizing the role of GOC's canonical territoriality in the question of Georgia's sovereign territoriality, the paper concludes that the GOC is a territorial power in its own right, not merely a spiritual wing of the state of Georgia.