Remembering the past against the grain: an analysis of the reconstructions of the past in The Sunday News's ‘Lest We Forget’ column

Memories of the nationalist struggle are fervently contested in Zimbabwean public spaces such as the media. This paper examines the emergence of the counter‐hegemonic historical narratives in the state‐controlled media that seek to subvert the dominant nationalist discourses propagated by the ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). Focusing on the Sunday News's Lest We Forget newspaper column, the paper analyses the representations of the role played by the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) in the liberation struggle, a nationalist movement whose contributions are marginalised and obscured in the official nationalist historiography. Given that in Zimbabwe the state‐owned media are generally viewed as mouthpieces of the ruling party, this paper identifies the tensions in the Sunday News as alternative historical memories are being reproduced and sustained. Drawing upon the critical discourse analysis (CDA) method, this article argues that alternative historical imaginations are rekindled in the state media.     

声援、动员、维权——从1930年“萧信庵案”看华侨的民族主义诉求

论文概述了萧信庵被辱事件的经过以及印尼侨胞的声援,国内侨界对“萧案”的舆论宣传和推动国民政府外交交涉;分析了“萧案”背后的华侨民族主义诉求。1930年萧信庵被辱事件,因涉及华侨权益和国家尊严而备受关注。在这一事件中,侨界群体以领导者的身份积极推动案件进展,最终使之发展成为一场规模浩大的反帝爱国运动。在此期间,不论是“萧案”的舆论发酵,还是“反荷运动”的发起,或是赴京请愿的义举,都无不透露出华侨群体以民族主义为纽带,凝聚社会各界资源,敦促国民政府践行积极外交政策,从而为印尼华侨争取政治经济利益的目的。华侨群体对“萧案”的积极介入,体现出20世纪30年代华侨民族主义具有反帝爱国和就地图存的双重性质。     

Origins of the norm against chemical weapons

The use of chemical weapons in Syria in August 2013 led to calls for a tough international response in order to uphold the norm against what is often portrayed as a particularly odious form of warfare. The condemnation of poison weapons has a long history and this article examines the origins of the international norm against their use. It focuses particularly on the proceedings of the first Hague Peace Conference and suggests that this represented the emergence of an important distinction between the customary norm against poison and poisoned arms, and a newly codified norm against the use of asphyxiating gas projectiles, which was primarily an attempt to limit the potential of new weapons technologies. However, psychological responses to the wide‐scale use of chemical weapons in the First World War underscored a deep revulsion to this form of warfare and blurred the distinction between gas projectiles and poison. While the Hague Conventions ultimately failed to avert the use of chemical weapons, the formation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol reaffirmed the norm against the use of poison in war and represented both a legal and moral condemnation of chemical and biological weapons that continues to be enshrined in international law today.     

The Matabeleland Massacres: Britain's wilful blindness

This article explores an episode of post-colonial state violence in the newly independent Zimbabwe, namely state-sanctioned atrocities by the army unit known as Fifth Brigade, perpetrated against the Ndebele of Matabeleland and Midlands region. This episode of political and ethnic violence that occurred between 1983 and 1987 is referred to as both the Matabeleland Massacres and Gukurahundi. Members of the British government in Zimbabwe, which included a British Military Advisory Training Team (BMATT) on the ground, were intimately aware of the violence that resulted in the death of between 10,000 and 20,000 people. This article analyses official British and US government communications between the British High Commission, Harare, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Defence, London, as well as between the US Department of State and the US Embassy in Harare. Analysis of the documents dated between January and March 1983 sheds a critical new lens on Gukurahundi, establishing what knowledge was available to the British and US governments about the persistent and relentless atrocities taking place; the diplomatic approaches pursued by both governments in response; and their rationale for same. The hitherto unavailable material presented here was obtained by Freedom of Information requests to various British Government offices and to the US Department of State. Analysis establishes that the British High Commission, Harare, had detailed knowledge of events unfolding in Matabeleland from an early stage of Gukurahundi, yet senior members of BMATT and the British diplomatic team in Harare, in contrast to their US counterparts, were consistent in their efforts to minimise the magnitude of Fifth Brigade atrocities. That the British government chose to adopt a policy of wilful blindness towards the atrocities undoubtedly constituted naked realpolitik.     

Combating light weapons proliferation in West Africa

Light weapons proliferation is a serious problem in West Africa. A regional moratorium on imports of small arms and light weapons has not worked and UN arms embargoes on Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire have had limited impact. The Economic Community of West African States is currently drafting a new binding legal instrument aimed at controlling flows in West Africa but this will only succeed if the heads of state and government seriously adopt it. This needs to include greater compliance of UN sanctions, international reform of the End User Certificate system, mapping the spread of artisan production and an examination of ammunition imports to West Africa. Better control of ammunition imports in particular may assist the combat of light weapons proliferation as well as the comprehensive destruction of weapons from disarmament efforts. The illicit weapons trade in West Africa is increasingly transnational and it requires regional and international cooperation and support to combat it.     

Canaan Banana,Churches and the Land Issue: Revisiting Theology of Zimbabwe’s Vilified Prophet

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to revisit and evaluate the “combat theology” developed by Canaan Banana, a contemporary theologian, Methodist minister and the first president of Zimbabwe, notably with regard to the issue of land dispossession. It does so primarily against the backdrop of the historical analysis of the ways in which power operated at the intersection of religion and politics during the first three decades after Zimbabwe’s attainment of political independence (1980). The article interrogates several facets of Banana’s liberationist view of justice with regard to the land issue, including (a) speaking truth to political power, regardless of consequences; (b) bearing a prophetic witness vis-à-vis the church’s own complicity in wrongdoing; as well as (c) making a distinction between the selective acts of “liberating violence” and the systemic violence inherent in unjust socio-political structures.     

Humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and the logic of a ban

The achievement of past international treaties prohibiting anti‐personnel mines and cluster munitions showed that unpropitious political situations for dealing with the effects of problematic weapons could be transformed into concrete, legally binding actions through humanitarian‐inspired initiatives. Although there is now renewed concern about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, some policy makers dispute the relevance of these past processes. This article examines how and why cluster munitions became widely reframed as unacceptable weapons, and the nature and significance of functional similarities with contemporary efforts of civil society activists to instigate humanitarian reframing of nuclear weapons and promote the logic of a ban treaty in view of its norm‐setting value among states. In the case of cluster munitions, the weapon in question was signified as unacceptable in moral and humanitarian law terms because of its pattern of harm to civilians with reference to demonstrable evidence of the consequences of use. Ideational reframing was instigated by civil society actors, and introduced doubts into the minds of some policy‐makers about weapons they had previously considered as unproblematic. This is relevant to the current discourse on managing and eliminating nuclear weapons in the Nuclear Non‐Proliferation Treaty, in which there is dissonance between the rhetoric of those states claiming to be responsible humanitarian powers and their continued dependence on nuclear weapons despite questions about the utility or acceptability of these arms.     

Deterrence dogma? Challenging the relevance of British nuclear weapons

In December 2006 the British government released a White Paper announcing its intention to begin the process of replacing its current Trident nuclear weapons system, thereby allowing it to retain nuclear weapons well into the 2050s. In March 2008 the government released its National Security Strategy that stressed the long‐term complexity, diversity and interdependence of threats to British security with a clear focus on human rights, justice and freedom. This article asks how the threat to kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people with British nuclear weapons fits into the National Security Strategy's world view and questions the relevance of an instrument of such devastating bluntness to threats defined by complexity and interdependence. It argues that the government's case for replacing the current Trident system based on the logic of nuclear deterrence is flawed. First, Britain faces no strategic nuclear threats and the long‐term post‐Cold War trend in relations with Russia and China—the two nuclear‐armed major powers that could conceivably threaten the UK with nuclear attack—is positive, despite current tensions with Moscow over Georgia. Second, the credibility and legitimacy of threatening nuclear destruction in response to the use of WMD by ‘rogue’ states is highly questionable and British nuclear threats offer no ‘insurance’ or guarantee of protection against future ‘rogue’ nuclear threats. Third, nuclear weapons have no role to play in deterring acts of nuclear terrorism whether state‐sponsored or not. Fourth, British nuclear threats will be useless in dealing with complex future conflicts characterized by ‘hybrid’ wars and diverse and interdependent sources of insecurity. The article concludes by arguing that the government's fall‐back position that it must keep nuclear weapons ‘just in case’ because the future security environment appears so uncertain, makes no sense if British nuclear threats offer no solution to the causes and symptoms of that uncertainty.     

The global effects of nuclear winter: science and antinuclear protest in the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1980s

During the 1980s, Carl Sagan and other scientists used the theory of nuclear winter to criticize the arms race. Historians have largely dismissed nuclear winter as a political movement. In fact, nuclear winter influenced debate over nuclear weapons in the United States, despite contentious scientific and political arguments. In addition, an analysis of nuclear winter's reception in the Soviet Union reveals that the theory resonated on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The global debate over nuclear winter shows the potency of scientific arguments against nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and demonstrates the complex relationship between science and politics.     

论日本关东军的武器流向

有关日本关东军的武器装备流向,史学界一直没有明确的说法。前苏联方面有4种相关数字,但这些数字有笔误和夸大的成分。从东北解放军武器增多的数量和时间来分析,可以看出投降关东军的武器装备有支援中共、散落民间和运往前苏联的三个流向。     

Moral and discursive geographies in the war for biodiversity in Africa

Since the 1980s, several African governments have responded to declining wildlife populations by issuing shoot-on-sight orders for “poachers” found within national parks. War is now a common model and metaphor for conceptualizing and planning biodiversity protection in Africa. Consequently, there is a new moral geography wherein parks and protected areas have become spaces of deadly violence. This article seeks to understand the moral justification for shoot-on-sight protocols in African biodiversity protection and examine the ramifications for the overall level of violence in national parks. It builds on and extends the political ecology analysis of violence and justice through an engagement with the environmental ethics literature. It concludes that a moral justification for shoot on sight and wartime violence cannot be demonstrated within the various philosophical approaches to environmental ethics. Yet wartime ethics and shoot on sight have become taken for granted in Africa. The article posits that discursive analysis can elucidate why this is so. Through a careful analysis of popular media it shows how key identities are discursively constructed to radically reorder the moral standing of African poachers and wild animals. These discursively constructed identities operate to simultaneously humanize wild animals and denigrate poachers, including impoverished peasants searching for small game or fish. As a consequence, it argues, human rights abuses and deadly violence against humans in the defense of “biodiversity” have become normalized within African national parks.     

Arms and Men: the Diplomacy of US Weapons Traffic with Saint-Domingue under Adams and Jefferson

This article examines Franco-American Quasi-War Saint-Domingue diplomacy, including the issue of US shipments of arms to Toussaint Louverture's rebellious colony (Haiti). Most experts assume that the United States furnished Haiti abundant munitions, but in 1797 Congress passed an arms embargo for the Quasi-War's duration. From June 1798 until August 1799, after President Adams reopened trade with Haiti, no trade with France or its colonies was permitted. In June 1799, US consul Edward Stevens, British General Maitland, and Louverture agreed to ban Haitian weapons purchases. Unaware that US trade with Haiti was illegal, scholars assume that US merchants and the Adams administration supplied blacks munitions. The only specific arms deal cited, involving Boston merchant Stephen Higginson and Secretary of State Pickering, was unconsummated. US shippers smuggled weapons to Haiti (1799–1801), against US laws and agreements, and probably relatively insignificantly. To conciliate Britain and protect slavery, the State Department risked war with Louverture. Only after President Jefferson, whom historians assume bitterly opposed Haiti, disavowed Anglo-American agreements did US merchants legally sell blacks armaments, doing so in substantial amounts, arousing French protests. The eagerness of Higginson, Stevens, and others to profit from illegal arms sales suggests they followed pecuniary incentives more than antislavery idealism in Haitian policy.     

A Chronicle of Failure Foretold: The UK,Israel and Arms Sales to Argentina in the Era of the Falklands War

In spite of fierce British protests, Israel supplied Argentina with arms both during the Falklands war and with greater intensity after the fighting. While the weapons sales were vital for Israel's economy and its arms industry, recently declassified papers suggest that the Begin government viewed the arms supplies to Argentina as a bargaining chip to exert pressure on Britain to halt its own sale of weapons to Israel's Arab adversaries and to end London's arms embargo against the Jewish State. Britain's restrictions on arms sales had long cast a shadow over Anglo-Israeli ties, and Israeli resentment towards Britain was exacerbated by anger over London's strong condemnation of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its leading involvement in the EEC Venice Declaration of June 1980 which recognized Palestinian self-determination and a role for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Israelis also perceived the arms supplies as a means to influence the junta in its treatment of Argentina's Jews. Yet, there was actually a rise in the level of anti-Semitism in Argentina during the period in question. At the same time, Britain's approach in attempting to dissuade its allies from selling arms to Argentina was riddled with inconsistencies and ultimately misconceived.     

The arming of non-state actors in the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula

Rebellious non-state actors of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula have been arming themselves through smuggling networks operating in north-east Africa and the Middle East. They feature complex, dynamic, open systems which include many components of various organisational and national identities, and which are driven by various motives, united in order to accomplish the goal of arms smuggling. Previously, this system was dominated by the supply of Iranian large and high-quality weapon systems, mainly rockets, to the Palestinian Hamas, enabling them to build up military force that has sustained long-standing conflict against the stronger Israel. The Arab turmoil initiated dramatic changes in the arming system: Iran stopped, at least temporarily, the channelling of weapons to the Hamas due to its support of the Syrian opposition against the Assad regime. Egypt blocked many of Hamas's smuggling tunnels, intensifying Hamas's strategic isolation. Following the removal of Gaddafi and lack of government, Libya became a major arms source, serving mainly regional radical Islamic groups. Salafist jihadist groups in Sinai revolted against the Egyptian government, using huge local stockpiles of weapons and operational cooperation with Palestinian Islamists. This article argues that to survive, rebellious non-state actors must exploit arming opportunities in the physical, social and political environment, whereas securing shared borders is vital for defeating rebellious non-state actors. The arming of non-state actors should be analysed broadly, considering the needs of the civilian population among whom the militants are operating.     

The Military Factor in Scientific Research

Abstract

The role of the military imperative in science is here examined. The historical drives of nation states to defend themselves, or to transmute defence into offence, have been a consistently compulsive and political factor since at least the European Renaissance. Here the manifold aspects of the military factor are reviewed, including the rare occasions when improved weapons technology was spurned, the drive for mass production of arms, chemical warfare, the economic and political power of the arms bazaar, export control of arms and finally the efforts to achieve disarmament.     

越南难侨的身份协商与国家认同——基于珠海市原红旗华侨农场的案例

20世纪中期,东南亚多国先后出现排华潮,大量华人华侨以“难侨”身份被迫返回祖国。难侨独特的生命历程和空间实践,使其展演出不同的身份协商过程和国家认同变迁。本文以珠海市原红旗华侨农场的越南难侨为研究对象,采用定性研究方法,剖析其在归国前后不同时期和不同空间的各方互动中身份协商和国家认同的演变过程。研究指出：越南难侨在群体互动、政府政策以及社会支持的影响下,在归国之前、归国初期和归国后期有着明显的身份认同变化;在这一过程中,其对祖国（中国）的国家认同不断加强。研究通过时空耦合视角为移民的身份协商和国家认同研究提供新的分析框架,亦从侧面反映出中国近半个世纪以来在难民治理和侨务政策方面所取得的成效。     

Privatization of Security,Arms Proliferation and the Process of State Collapse in Africa

Most so–called ‘collapsed states’ in Africa are extreme cases of the complex and contradictory processes of state–making and unmaking which are unfolding in the continent. Beneath the veneer of sovereignty, virtually all these nations started their independent existence in the 1960s as shell states. Since then, they have either followed the path of self–destruction (state collapse) or have sought to fill the shell with institutional content (state–making). Private military intervention is one of the key external factors undermining the state–building project. Whether in its traditional ‘soldier of fortune’ form, or in its current corporate cloak, the privatization of security injects an inflammatory element into the governance process in weak states. Since independence, the populations of Africa have been subjected to structural violence that has highlighted force and de–emphasized human security as the cornerstone of governance. Civil society reactions to this have become more pronounced since the end of the Cold War, and have led to negative reconfiguration in weak states that are least equipped to manage the new challenges. The privatization of security impedes efforts to fashion accountable governance, and entrenches the culture of violence. Private military companies, their partner arms brokers and local warlords are the principal actors in illegitimate resource appropriation — a major cause of ongoing asymmetric warfare in Africa — and the proliferation of weapons — an incendiary element in these wars.     

Burma and North Korea: conventional allies or nuclear partners?

During the third quarter of 2009, there was a spate of reports in the news media and on the Internet accusing Burma and North Korea of engaging in a range of activities that potentially threatened regional security. It was claimed that the Naypyidaw regime had developed a close relationship with Pyongyang that included North Korea's sale to Burma of conventional weapons, assistance in the development of Burma's defence infrastructure and arms industries, and even collaboration on a nuclear weapons program. Given the lack of hard evidence, however, these reports raised more questions than they answered. Burma's nuclear status remains unknown. Another puzzle is why no government or international organisation has yet made an official statement on this particular issue, despite all the publicity it has attracted. Should it be determined that Burma does indeed have a secret nuclear weapons program, then a key question would be whether the generals are likely to be any more receptive to international concerns than they have been in the past, on other issues.     

Strategic taboos: chemical weapons and US foreign policy

This article examines US President Barack Obama's foreign policy rhetoric on Syria, specifically in relation to the threat of chemical weapons and the prohibitionary taboo surrounding their use. It contends that Obama's rhetorical construction of the taboo is not simply a commitment to the control of these horrific weapons (where such arms have been comprehended as so extensively vile as to preclude their employment), but that this also represents the strategic linguistic exploitation of these normative ideals in order to directly shape policy. By analysing of presidential speeches made during the conflict, it demonstrates that Obama has manipulated pre‐existing conceptions of chemical weapons as taboo, and also as forms of weapons of mass destruction, to deliberately construct policy in line with his own political ambitions—most notably as a way of forcing a multilateral solution to the situation in Syria. This article challenges existing perceptions of the chemical weapons taboo as an inherently normative constraint, arguing that this instead comprises a more agency‐driven construct. Static notions of the taboo must be abandoned and subsequently replaced with a framework of understanding that recognizes how the taboo can be used as a deliberate driver of foreign policy.     

Ending sexual violence in conflict: the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and its critics

During the past year, the UK Government has become the lead advocate for a perhaps surprising foreign policy goal: ending sexual violence in conflict. The participation of government representatives from more than 120 countries in a London Summit in June 2014 was the clearest manifestation of this project. This article offers an early assessment of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI) and situates it within the history of global action against sexual and gender‐based violence from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 onwards, with a particular focus on three key developments. First, the PSVI has embraced the already common understanding of rape as a ‘weapon of war’, and has stressed the importance of military training and accountability. This has exposed the tensions within global policy between a focus on all forms of sexual violence (including intimate partner violence in and out of conflict situations) on the one hand, and war zone activities on the other. Second, the Initiative has placed great emphasis on ending impunity, which implicates it in ongoing debates about the role of international and local justice as an effective response to atrocity. Third, men and boys have been foregrounded as ignored victims of sexual and gender‐based violence. The PSVI has been crucial to that recognition, but faces significant challenges in operationalizing its commitment and in avoiding damage to existing programmes to end violence against women and girls. The success of the Initiative will depend on its ability to navigate these challenges in multiple arenas of global politics.