Anglo-Irish Relations, 1939-41: A Study in Multilateral Diplomacy and Military Restraint

‘This study bridges two gaps, one in the historiographyof Anglo-Irish relations between 1939 and 1941 and the otherin International Relations (IR) theory. Anglo-Irish relationsduring the Second World War have been the subject of numerousstudies focusing upon the bilateral nature of that relationship,but it was subject to serious multilateral considerations—theCommonwealth and the US. At moments of danger between the twostates, it was not the balance of a bilateral relationship,but rather of a broad multilateral structure which set the paceof British policy-making. This restrained British military planningagainst Eire. The history of Anglo-Irish relations in this periodpositively links the conduct of multilateral diplomacy withthe absence of the use of force. From the standpoint of IR theory,this provides a useful ‘hard’ case for how/why multilateralismmay matter. It also illustrates several of the deficienciesin IR theory, not least the Whiggish assumption that integrationor globalization follow a linear progression (against whichstands the equally Whiggish notion that interstate relationsare eternally cast). This article seeks to demonstrate thata somewhat wider appreciation of history makes it possible toreconcile multilateral diplomacy with many more traditional‘realist’ concerns.’     

‘Cornerstone of the Commonwealth’: The Press Union and the Preservation of the Penny Cable Rate, 1941–67

The article examines the protracted commitment of the Commonwealth Press Union (formerly the Empire Press Union) to maintaining cheap press rates during the post-war period as a means of promoting information exchange and co-operation among commonwealth countries. In documenting the strenuous efforts of the Press Union, ultimately unsuccessful, to resist calls, from the late 1950s onwards, for increased press cable charges, the article demonstrates that the Press Union's ongoing defence of the commonwealth press rate extended beyond its British leadership to include longstanding member countries, such as Australia, which had traditionally been disadvantaged by distance from London and exorbitant communication charges. Consequently, its protracted defence of the penny cable rate constitutes an important, if neglected, episode in understanding the changing character of commonwealth relations in the critical post-war years.     

‘The Anglo-Irish Agreement put us on side with the Americans’: Margaret Thatcher,Anglo-American relations and the path to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, 1979-1985

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critical re-evaluation of British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with U.S president, Jimmy Carter (1977–1981) and his successor, Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict from 1979 to 1985. Specifically, it examines the impact that the ‘Irish Question’ had on the changing nature of Anglo-American relations from Thatcher’s entry to No. 10 Downing Street in May 1979 to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) in November 1985.     

Transboundary conservation and militarized interstate disputes

Advocates of transboundary conservation argue that borderlands can be a source of cooperation between neighboring states that previously engaged in conflict. It has been stated that, by opening negotiation channels based on environmental issues, jointly managed cross-border protected areas can promote and reinforce harmonious relations between contiguous states. We explore this assertion by empirically testing how transboundary protected areas (TBPAs) are related to militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) between contiguous states. Through the use of global data on protected areas and MIDs, we find that TBPAs tend to be established between countries that have previously been engaged in MIDs. We also find some evidence that TBPAs can be related to a more peaceful co-existence between neighboring countries in Africa, Middle East, and Asia.     

Show solidarity,live solitarily: the Nazi ‘New Europe’ as a ‘family of peoples’

Abstract

This chapter first investigates how the German Nazis used the term ‘European solidarity’ and demonstrates that the term meant political loyalty between European ‘peoples’ (Völker) in National Socialist discourses. Second, assuming that the Nazis’ objective in showing solidarity with or demanding loyalty from other nations was to increase strength in what they believed to be a conflict with ‘international Jewry’, it examines the logic of the Nazis behind including other European countries into their own camp in that conflict. It will be argued that the Nazis developed a sense of belonging with non-German Europeans based on three ideas: (1) the racist myth that all Europeans belonged to the ‘Aryan race’; (2) a Europe-wide consensus of the extreme Right on anti-Communism, antisemitism, and anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist worldviews; and (3) the existence of cross-border relations within Europe which led to shared experiences. The article draws on primary sources as well as on secondary literature about National Socialist concepts of Europe and about transnational academic, cultural and social relations in the National Socialist sphere of influence.     

‘Why Disgrace the Commonwealth?’ Ceylonese Communalism,the Search for Global Influence and the Politics of a Transnational Organisation, 1948–65

This article examines the progress of the commonwealth as a forum for political action by Ceylonese in the first two decades after the nation’s independence by focusing on the debate over Tamil political rights. Significantly, this domestic conflict intensified during a crucial phase in the commonwealth’s transition, from being essentially a members’ club consisting of Britain and the settler dominions to a multilateral organisation led by newly independent African and Asian states. In this ambivalent geopolitical landscape, an emerging small state such as Ceylon sought to use the commonwealth in such a way as to project itself on the world stage, while at the same time some of its citizens adopted the organisation as a focus for liberal causes against the state. In this way, it is argued, the ‘new commonwealth’ was being shaped by postcolonial British legacies of global influence and liberal politics.     

The 1985 Supplementary Extradition Treaty between the United States of America and the United Kingdom: an exercise in soft power

The relationship between the United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland during the years of conflict in Northern Ireland has been the topic of significant scholarly literature, but rarely has this literature examined the statecraft behind US interventions in Northern Ireland in the years before the election of President Bill Clinton. In this article, I will use a range of recently declassified state papers and a series of personal interviews to examine the introduction of the 1985 Supplementary Extradition Treaty between the United States and United Kingdom and show how the British government successfully manoeuvred their American counterparts, in both the Executive and Legislative branches, towards ratification of both the extradition treaty and the Anglo-Irish Agreement Support Act of 1986.     

The political significance of the coinage of the Irish Free State

This article examines the political context of the new Irish coinage that was introduced in 1928. It attempts to illustrate how the coins of the Irish Free State were products of the political circumstances of their time. The article also analyses the political negotiations concerning the future of the large quantity of British coins that remained in circulation in the Irish Free State. The conclusion will argue that the Irish coins issued in 1928 were of considerable political importance as symbols of national identity visible to the general public on a daily basis. Symbols of this nature were of particular significance to the Irish Free State because its status as a sovereign state was open to dispute in the 1920s and 1930s. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 made it clear that the Irish Free State was a Dominion of the British Empire. This article will argue that the political background to the introduction of the new Irish coins reflects wider controversies that dominated Irish politics and external relations in the years between the two world wars.     

Solidarity within limits: Interkit and the evolution of the Soviet Bloc’s Indochina policy, 1967–1985

This article examines how Interkit, the Soviet-controlled ‘anti-China International’, evaluated the development of Sino-Indochinese relations, and which contribution the Vietnamese and Laotian delegations made to the forum’s meetings. It investigates how the various shifts in Sino-Soviet and Soviet-US relations enhanced or reduced Vietnam’s relative importance in Soviet strategy. It describes how the Kremlin sought to dissuade its East European satellites from responding to Beijing’s overtures by presenting the Sino-Vietnamese conflict as evidence of China’s belligerence, and examines the ideological linkage between Soviet superpower hegemony over Eastern Europe and Vietnamese regional hegemony over Indochina.     

War as Feminized Labour in the Global Political Economy of Neoimperialism

ABSTRACT

This article examines the structures of international relations that facilitate political violence in postcolonial states. It explores the intersections of patriarchy and imperialism in the contemporary political economy to understand how armed conflict and political violence in postcolonial states form an integral element of the global economy of accumulation in deeply gendered ways. By focusing on the structural level of analysis, this article argues that the siting of armed conflict in postcolonial contexts serves to maintain neo-colonial relations of exploitation between the West and non-West, and is made both possible and effective through the gendering of political identities and types of work performed in the global economy. I argue here that armed conflict is a form of feminized labour in the global economy. Despite the fact that performing violence is a physically masculine form of labour, the outsourcing of armed conflict as labour in the political economy is ‘feminized’ in that it represents the flexibilization of labour and informalization of market participation. So while at the same time that this work is fulfilling hegemonic ideals of militarized masculinity within the domestic context, at the international level it actually demonstrates the ‘weakness’ or ‘otherness’ of the ‘failed’/feminized state in which this violence occurs, and legitimizes and hence re-entrenches the hegemonic relations between the core and periphery on the basis of problematizing the ‘weak’ state’s masculinity. It is through the discursive construction of the non-Western world as the site of contemporary political violence that mainstream international relations reproduces an orientalist approach to both understanding and addressing the ‘war puzzle’.     

Thick Decisions: Expertise,Advocacy and Reasonableness in the Federal Court of Australia

Drawing from the litigation around the Hindmarsh Island Bridge (especially Chapman v Luminis Pty Ltd 2001) this article provides an analysis of judicial responses to anthropological expertise. Sensitive to the institutional responsibilities of judges, as well as rules of evidence, procedures and legal causes of action, it examines the strategic representation and appropriation of anthropological knowledge and practice. In exploring the relations between law and expertise the article illustrates how their combination shapes outcomes. In the process it explains how the judge could have produced a range of (in)consistent outcomes through the modulation of legal categories and their relations with prevalent images of anthropological expertise. This analysis positions the article to critically reflect on some of the implications for anthropologists working in and around legal or quasi‐legal settings as well as those commenting on that participation.     

Resistance and the Rule of Law in Mexico

Judicial reform and promotion of the rule of law are at the very top of the political agendas of many developing countries. Moreover, in the context of democratization and a growing concern for human rights and citizenship, many social groups are prepared to use the law as a means to challenge the State. This article looks at how a group in Mexico used the law to resist the State's attempt to expropriate land for urban development. The law was used as a method of opposition as well as a symbol, by allowing the resistance to be represented in the form of ‘rights’. In so doing, the legal discourse exposed deeper concerns for justice, ethnicity and nationhood. The solution to the conflict, however, is shown to bear little relation to either the legal framework which structured the resistance or the legal principles which the confrontation sought to establish.     

Iran's ISIS policy

This article assesses Iran's strategy in dealing with the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). It examines the implications of the rise of ISIS in Iran's immediate neighbourhood for Tehran's policies in Syria and Iraq and investigates how each of these countries affects Iranian national interests. It provides an overview of the major events marking Iran and Iraq's relations in the past few decades and discusses the strategic importance of Iraq for Iran, by looking at the two countries' energy, economic and religious ties. It also considers Iran's involvement in Syria since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The article sheds light on the unilateral action taken by Tehran to counter ISIS, the adjustments it may have to make to its involvement in Syria, and the potential areas for tactical cooperation between Iran and the United States, as well as other key regional states such as Saudi Arabia. The article investigates three likely scenarios affecting the developments in Iraq and Iran's possible response to them as the events in the Middle East unfold.     

‘An Obstacle,though not a Barrier’: the Role of International Law in Security Planning during the Pax Britannica

This article explores the role of international law in nineteenth-century British security planning, arguing that statesmen believed law could only influence state conduct rather than determine outcomes. As a result, statesmen crafted agreements to exploit the possibilities of international law while recognising its limitations. The article explores the functions of law, providing examples of how diplomats employed law to increase predictability in interstate relations, signal national interests, and strengthen mutual interests between countries. However, the role of war in the international legal system exposed flawed assumptions about the future of war, limiting the effectiveness of law.     

Anglo-Irish and Gaelic marriage laws and traditions in late medieval Ireland

This paper is intended to draw attention to the very different rights and restrictions accorded to Anglo-Irish and Gaelic women in late medieval Ireland. These differing traditions concerning marriage and women's rights within it led to conflicting marital experiences for Anglo-Irish and Gaelic women during this period. Fundamentally the Anglo-Irish idea of marriage was opposed to the Gaelic one which led to clashes especially where intermarriage between the two cultures took place.     

Understanding the July 2016 Military Coup: The Contemporary Security Dilemma in Turkey

This study explores the link between religious identity and conflict in contemporary Turkey by examining the dramatic reversals in the relations between the country’s two prominent Islamic social forces, the ruling party AKP and the Gülen Organization. It shows how a particular trajectory of power and identity between the two religious forces transformed into a brutal security competition in the Turkish society and polity. It puts the analytical foci on the following puzzle: how did the Gülen community — once a confidential ally of AKP — turn into a coup plotter in the Turkish military to bring down the elected government? In order to explore the puzzle, the study offers significant departures from the standard approaches to religious identity and conflict by employing a distinct concept — the inter‐societal security dilemma.     

War 2.0: an analytical framework

Media has always been a critical dimension of politics and of political violence. Information about violence and conflict is disseminated through the media. Media is also a mechanism through which the politics of violence is monitored, represented and interpreted. While the historical relationship between old media and political violence has long been the subject of research and debate, how this relationship is affected by the emergence of digital new media technology warrants further consideration. This development raises several important issues and questions for students of international relations, in particular with respect to how the reconfiguration of the role of media in conflict impacts more broadly on configurations of world politics. This article identifies four critical dimensions of world politics through which to explore this impact: the constitution of power, the configuration of agency, the nature and politics of representation, and the constitution of legitimacy. It argues that the concepts of power, agency, representation and legitimacy provide critical interfaces between media, conflict and world politics. In so doing, the article elucidates the conceptual framework that animates this special issue. Finally, it reflects on how these concepts are engaged in the articles to follow.     

中国—中亚合作冲突关系及时空热点分析

中亚地处欧亚大陆中心，是“一带一路”倡议建设的重要区域。本文基于GDELT新闻媒体数据库，构建了事件影响度和双边关系度，定量分析了中国与中亚国家之间的合作、冲突关系演变，采用时空热点分析识别了中国在中亚城市尺度的合作、冲突热点模式。结果表明：①中国与中亚国家的合作日趋紧密。“一带一路”倡议提出之后，中国与中亚国家的合作趋势显著上升，与哈萨克斯坦的合作关系最为紧密。②中国在中亚地区的合作区域集中在中亚国家首都、战略要地、重要能源基地等，在乌兹别克斯坦安集延地区和塔吉克斯坦哈特隆州形成集中连片的合作区域。冲突区域集中在中亚国家首都和战略要地，与合作区域在空间上高度重合，但影响力显著低于合作事件。③中国在中亚城市的影响力以合作关系占主导，冲突关系大于合作关系的城市主要分布在吉尔吉斯斯坦。64%的中亚城市为低合作—低冲突状态，中亚国家首都、阿拉木图、安集延属于显著的高合作—高冲突城市。④时间尺度上，中国与中亚地区的合作热点以持续型为主，冲突热点以振荡型为主，哈萨克斯坦纳伦市、阿特劳州为新增冲突热点，应引起重视。