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.     

‘It’s a different time. It’s a different era. It’s a different place’: the Legacy of Vietnam and Contemporary Memoirs of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Abstract

This article examines censorship of US journalists in World Wars I and II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War, and from war to war, trends in types of censored information. This article also answers whether any censorship has avoided bloodshed or been legitimate, and concludes by examining how, in any future US wars, the government or military could most legitimately ensure safe reporting.     

The question of ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics: Querying the ‘child soldier’ in the ‘war on terror’

After two decades of scholarship on ‘critical geopolitics’, the question of whether it is largely a discursive critique of prevailing knowledge production and geopolitical texts or critique with an implicit, normative politics of its own remains open. These positions are not incommensurate, and much scholarship on critical geopolitics does both. This paper analyzes critical geopoliticians' concern with this question in the present historical moment and probes the possibility of a post-foundational ethic as the basis for ‘the political’ in critical geopolitics and beyond. Empirically, this paper explores these theoretical tensions within ‘critical geopolitics’ by tracing the disparate fates of two young men, both child soldiers at the time of their capture. ‘Child soldier’ is an unstable category subject to geopolitical valence and stigma during the ‘war on terror’. The deployment of extra-legal tactics and spaces of violence, such as those faced by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, point to the rise of biopolitics combined with geopolitics, illustrating the intersection of sovereignty and governmentality as important political fodder for critical geopolitics two decades after its inception. The stories of Canadian Omar Khadr, one of the youngest prisoners at Guantanamo and the only citizen of a Western state still held there, and Ismael Beah, a rehabilitated soldier who fought as a boy from Sierra Leone, illustrate too how geographical imagination strongly shapes access to provisions of international law and the victimized status of ‘child soldier’ in particular.     

‘‘This Secret Town’: British Intelligence,the Special Relationship,and the Vietnam War’

This article seeks to revise our understanding of Cold War intelligence as a practice. The conventional view is that Britain's MI6 waged a battle in the shadows consisting of espionage and covert action. However, a number of MI6 officers operated as observers, conducting what we might call ‘intelligence without espionage’. The dual identity of these officers raises important questions about how intelligence operated in the blurred space between traditional diplomacy and human espionage using agents. Using the case of MI6 officers in the British Consulate-General in Hanoi between 1965 and 1972, this article explores how a dual identity provided alternative means of acquiring intelligence within a highly secure state that exhibited remarkable paranoia about foreign spies. Furthermore, the United States lacked diplomatic representation in Hanoi and so the British Consulate provided a remarkable window for Western intelligence on the effect of ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’, Lyndon Johnson's escalating air campaign against North Vietnam. Both Johnson and Harold Wilson were avid readers of this material. Accordingly, in the context of the Cold War intelligence partnership between the UK and US, the consulate in Hanoi was an example of the ‘inverse’ special relationship, in which Britain enjoyed unique value.     

Was Iraq an unjust war? A debate on the Iraq war and reflections on Libya*

This article is based on a debate held on 22 March 2011 at Chatham House on ‘Was Iraq an unjust war?’ David Fisher argues that the war fully failed to meet any of the just war criteria. The war was undertaken to disarm Iraq of its WMD but the evidence that it had such weapons was inadequate. There were concerns about the justice of the cause, reinforced by doubts that those initiating military action avowedly on behalf of the UN had the requisite competent authority to do so, given the absence of any international consensus in favour of military action. The doubts were further reinforced by concern that action was being undertaken too soon and not as a last resort. Crucially, no adequate assessment was undertaken before military action was authorized to seek to ensure that the harm likely to result would not outweigh the good achieved. The individual failures mutually reinforced each other, so building up cumulatively to support the conclusion that the war was undertaken without sufficient just cause and without adequate planning how to achieve a just outcome following military action to impose regime change. It thus failed the two key tests that have to be met before a war can be justly undertaken, designed to ensure that military action is only initiated if more good than harm is likely to result. By contrast, current coalition operations in Libya are, so far, just. This is a humanitarian operation undertaken to halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is taking place, with wide international support, including authorization by the UN Security Council. Nigel Biggar argues that the fact that the invasion and occupation of Iraq suffered from grave errors, some of them morally culpable, does not yet establish its overall injustice. All wars are morally flawed, even just ones. Further, even if the invasion were illegal, that need not make it immoral. The authority of moral law trumps that of international law, and where the politics of the Security Council prevent the UN from enforcing the law, unauthorized enforcement could be morally justified. Further still, massive civilian casualties do not by themselves make an unjust war. The decisive considerations are those of just cause, last resort and right intention. Proportionality is not among them, because estimating it is far too uncertain. The persistently atrocious nature of the Saddam Hussein regime satisfies just cause; evidence of collapsing containment grounds last resort; and the Coalition's costly correction of early errors proved the seriousness of its good intentions. In sum the invasion and occupation of Iraq was, despite grave errors, justified. Regarding Libya, Biggar notes the recurrence of conflict over the interpretation of international law. He wonders how those who distinguish sharply between protecting civilians and regime change imagine that dissident civilians are to be ‘kept’ safe while Qadhafi remains in power. Against those who clamour for a clear exit‐strategy, he counsels agility, while urging sensitivity to the limits of our power. What was right to begin may become imprudent to continue.     

Research on and by ‘the Other’. Focusing on the Researcher's Encounter with the Lule Sami in a Historically Changing Context

Abstract

A century and half ago, the encounter between the researcher and those (s)he researched were described and seen from the vantage point of the researcher. ‘The others’ participated in the encounters, but were seldom asked for advice regarding the approach or to provide their own perspectives. But this has changed. Originally playing the passive role of the objects of research, today the Sami and Kven of northern Norway have taken on the role of the active participant. These changes are apparent when examining research on the Lule Sami in Norway over the last 150 years. Several dimensions must be considered. First, the researcher and their research must be placed and understood within the contemporary ideological context, implying that the situation of the researcher will reflect the social and political conditions of the time. Analysis of research from the Lule Sami area demonstrates how the researcher's perspective on the Sami people and culture has changed over time, how the Sami role in history, and thus cultural diversity, has been revealed in greater detail, and how the Sami part of the population has increasingly participated by taking on the role of the researcher. Finally, the encounter is analysed in an international context, which shows how the local and national changes are also part of an international development.     

A Technical Note on the ‘Gloucester Candlestick’

Abstract

The Association is pleased to acknowledge the generous support of Manx National Heritage towards this publication.

The excavation of the only Cistercian abbey firmly established on the Isle of Man produced evidence for an east range of only three rooms, apparently dated to a single constructional period. After the Dissolution this range was gradually robbed and then the area was used as a farm-yard, receiving rubbish deposited from the neighbouring mansion. It was partly excavated in 1914 and turned into an aviary and later into a rose garden. The rere-dorter was not found nor was there any evidence of the main drain adjoining this range.     

‘Signs of the still recent war’: Medbh McGuckian and conflict

In a review of Medbh McGuckian's poetry, Christopher Benfey maintained that ‘[t]o scan her poems for allusions to sectarian violence would be as fruitless and naïve as to sift Emily Dickinson's poems for references to the Civil War’. McGuckian's work is not often read for its commentary on or critique of violence in Northern Ireland. Indeed, in an interview with John Brown, the poet revealed that ‘I never thought of myself as a “Troubles” poet; it was not part of my oeuvre and I couldn't do it simply as an exercise, so I didn't take it on’. This article tests the validity of her self-assessment by examining poems which borrow from sources focused on conflict, particularly the two world wars. The intertexts allow the poet to explore moments of crisis (due to violence, imprisonment and enforced deprivation) without having to deal explicitly with the more immediate conflict in Northern Ireland.     

Covering up spying in the ‘Buster’ Crabb Affair: A note

Abstract

F EWER COLD WAR myths are more enduring in the United Kingdom than that of ‘Buster’ Crabb. In April 1956, Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) coaxed Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, a naval frogman from the Second World War, out of retirement to dive under the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze, while it was docked in Portsmouth. It had brought the Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita S. Khrushchev, to the United Kingdom on a state visit. The operation, routine by all accounts, ended in both personal and diplomatic failure. Fourteen months later, the decomposed body of a frogman washed up in Chichester harbour. Despite the British government’s hope that the discovery might be the end of the affair, it fired up the conspiracy theorists, who alleged that the body could not be Crabb’s; that, in fact, he had been kidnapped, taken to the Soviet Union, and renamed Korablev.¹ The government did little to dispel such myths. A few days after Crabb’s disappearance, The Times succinctly summed up the situation: ‘official reticence about the activities which led to the death of Commander Crabb has caused much speculation.’² Curiosity was further piqued a few days later when the prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, stated m the house of commons on 9 May that ‘it would not be in the public interest to disclose the circumstances in which Commander Crabb is presumed to have met his death.’³     

‘Don't mention the war!’ Debating Notion of a ‘Stalemate’ in Northern Ireland (and a Response to Dr Paul Dixon)

The Northern Ireland peace process is often celebrated as a model for conflict resolution, yet our understanding of exactly what occurred is still only at a formative stage. Many details, particularly concerning the counter-terrorist operations of the British government, remain buried within official archives, available only up until 1981. Some aspects of that campaign—variously called an ‘intelligence’, ‘secret’ or ‘dirty’ war—may never be uncovered because of a lack of official documentation. Nonetheless, attempts can be made to analyse the use of ‘harder’ forms of state power. Scholars should not be shy to offer reasoned historical judgements on the basis of available evidence. In seeking to understand why the conflict followed the path it did and ultimately came to an end, ‘hard power’ cannot be written out of the story. However, some seem more inclined to a position best characterised by Basil Fawlty's famous mantra: ‘Don't mention the war!’ An exaggerated example of this was provided by Dr Paul Dixon of Kingston University in an article in a previous issue of this journal, which made a number of criticisms of our book, Talking to Terrorists; Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. In this article, we respond to Dixon's criticisms and offer broader reflections on what transpired in Northern Ireland. In some instances, the deployment of ‘hard power’ by the British state exacerbated the conflict and proved counter-productive. Ultimately, however, we conclude that intelligence-led counter-terrorism operations did make a significant contribution to ending the situation. This is not to advocate the use of such methods or to play down the ‘soft power’ successes which are undoubtedly part of the Northern Ireland story; it is simply to acknowledge that such tactics were deployed in the past and form part of a complex historical picture.     

‘A Haven for Tortured Souls’: Hong Kong in the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War exerted a profound economic and social effect on Hong Kong. Between 1965 and 1970, the British Crown Colony annually hosted about 200,000 US ground and naval personnel on holiday. This influx annually earned Hong Kong about US$300–400 million (in 2012 dollars) and employed thousands of residents working in the colony's service industries. Using English- and Chinese-language archival materials from Hong Kong, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the article examines how US servicemen and the businesses catering to them became contentious issues in local society. Servicemen excited widespread interest, but their misdeeds and their stomping grounds provoked intense anxiety. Hong Kong residents’ ensuing debates exercised the colony's emerging public sphere, from newspaper battles to outspoken unions and neighbourhood associations. In tandem with the more commonly cited Star Ferry Riots of 1966 and the Communist agitations of 1967, US R&R was an essential ingredient in the emergence of a distinctive Hong Kong identity and citizenry during this period. While residents’ objections failed to curb the GIs’ haunts or holidays, Vietnam tourism and its reverberating effects pressed new sectors of Hong Kong people to grasp and articulate their investment as citizens in the territory's future.