Revisiting nineteenth-century U.S. interventionism in Central America: capitalism,intrigue, and the obliteration of Greytown

In October 2016 the Congressional Research Service published its latest version of “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad.” One of the “instances” occurred in 1854, and the entry reads in its entirety: “Naval forces bombarded and burned San Juan del Norte (Greytown) to avenge an insult to the American Minister to Nicaragua.”¹1. Torreon, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2016, 4.View all notes The following article posits that Greytown was not destroyed to avenge an insult to an American diplomat. Rather, two groups of prominent American businessmen used this and related events and their antecedents as pretexts to enlist the federal government in destroying Greytown. One group, representing a U.S.-owned isthmian steamboat company, sought to seize the port of Greytown as a private fiefdom; the other wanted it as the prospective capital of a new colony based on a huge, dubious land grant they owned.     

A solution from hell: the United States and the rise of humanitarian interventionism, 1991-2003

This article traces the rise of humanitarian interventionist ideas in the US from 1991 to 2003. Until 1997, humanitarian intervention was a relatively limited affair, conceived ad hoc more than systematically, prioritized below multilateralism, aiming to relieve suffering without transforming foreign polities. For this reason, US leaders and citizens scarcely contemplated armed intervention in the Rwandan genocide of 1994: the US 'duty to stop genocide' was a norm still under development. It flourished only in the late 1990s, when humanitarian interventionism, like neoconservatism, became popular in the US establishment and enthusiastic in urging military invasion to remake societies. Now inaction in Rwanda looked outrageous. Stopping the genocide seemed, in retrospect, easily achieved by 5,000 troops, a projection that ignored serious obstacles. On the whole, humanitarian interventionists tended to understate difficulties of halting ethnic conflict, ignore challenges of postconflict reconstruction, discount constraints imposed by public opinion, and override multilateral procedures. These assumptions primed politicians and the public to regard the Iraq war of 2003 as virtuous at best and unworthy of strenuous dissent at worst. The normative commitment to stop mass killing outstripped US or international capabilities—a formula for dashed hopes and dangerous deployments that lives on in the 'responsibility to protect'.     

Kin state non‐interventionism: Albania and regional stability in the Western Balkans

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Albanian regional policy from 1992 to 2013. Situated in a conflict‐ridden region and surrounded by co‐ethnics living in Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, Albania has successfully resisted pressure to undertake interventionist regional policies. However, there are no structured accounts as to how Albania fashioned its non‐interventionist regional policy. This article fills this gap and retraces the development of Albanian regional policy as a function of its inter‐mingled domestic politics and regional and international dynamics. The article concludes that the Albanian regional approach has been shaped by its legacy of communist isolation, pro‐Western predisposition and recognition that accommodation of Western interests would overcome its constraints and advance the rights of Albanians living in the Western Balkans. The analysis is important not just for understanding Albania's actions but also for disentangling the relationship between regional policy, nationalism and a kin state's domestic and international constraints.     

The limits to China's non-interference foreign policy: pro-state interventionism and the rescaling of economic governance

China's foreign policy has been long committed to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. While one could easily point out past and present-day inconsistencies in its implementation, this article argues that defenders and critics of the principle both rely on a limited interpretation of ‘interference’ or ‘intervention’ based on an ideology of Westphalian sovereignty. Particularly problematic is the conceptual distinction between the ‘political’ or ‘diplomatic’, on the one hand, and the ‘economic’, on the other. As Polanyi's concept of embeddedness reminds us, markets, society and politics occur simultaneously, and can only act as discrete realms in epistemological abstractions. It is thus argued that non-interference is a semi-formal institution that governs China's diplomatic engagements and affects its economic activities. While the totality of China's interactions with the world has diverse and sometimes contradictory impacts on global governance, non-interference itself has apparent consequences for the rescaling of regional economic governance. Specifically, this article contends that Chinese non-interference results in the empowerment of political elites at national levels, and thus in the (re-)emergence of the nation state as a gatekeeper and facilitator of the advancement of capitalist enterprises. As a result, through non-intervention, China's foreign policy undermines supranational regulatory approaches and fosters state-based regional architectures.     

Inventing traditions: interests,parables and nostalgia in the history of nuclear energy

Abstract

From the late 1960s on, light-water designs dominated the market for nuclear reactors in most Western countries. Up to that point in time, many national governments, scientists and industrialists had favoured the rival concepts of heavy-water and graphite-moderated plants. The article focuses on Sweden and West Germany, where central actors only reluctantly gave up their support for domestically developed heavy-water solutions. Studying new archival material and adopting Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of the ‘invention of tradition’, the authors analyze how contemporary actors mobilized both the nation and the past when arguing for plants using natural uranium and heavy water. The paper documents how autarkic arguments were superseded by nostalgic sentiments, and how-subsequently-historians have come to perpetuate apologetic parables like ‘Swedish line’ and ‘tradition’, respectively.     

Explaining Gun Deaths: Gun Control,Mental Illness,and Policymaking in the American States

Seeking to test two commonly proposed solutions to gun deaths in the United States, we examine the extent to which (1) tougher gun control laws, (2) greater access to mental health services, and (3) a combination of both approaches affect the rate of gun deaths in American states. We find that tougher gun control laws, as well as a combination of both approaches, are associated with a lower overall rate of gun deaths, and with a lower rate of nonsuicide gun deaths, while only tougher gun control laws are significantly associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related suicides. Our findings serve as an initial guide to policymakers seeking to reduce the rate of gun deaths in their states.     

Policy change and network termination: The role of farm groups in agricultural policy making in Australia

As the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2004, it is timely to reflect on the role of farm groups in agricultural policy making in Australia and revisit the policy changes of the 1970s which provided a major impetus for the NFF's formation. Agricultural policy is often presented as the classic case of policy developed by tight policy communities characterised by stability, shared ideology and limited membership. There has been much debate in the literature about the value of the concept of policy communities in explaining policy development processes and policy change. This article suggests that the combination of ideological and institutional change, particularly in the presence of looser policy networks, can disrupt policy making and lead to network termination resulting in policy change.     

Complexity,strategy and the national interest

British strategy‐making has been subject to a sustained critique in recent years, from parliamentarians, retired members of the armed forces and scholars of strategic studies. This article examines the nature of this critique and the evolving character of strategic practice in Britain. It argues that the criticisms of British strategymaking are often misplaced, for two main reasons. First, many base their critique on a reductionist notion of unitary ‘national interest’ that fails to capture systemic patterns of complexity and contestation in the wider security environment and in Britain. Second, they underestimate or ignore the extent to which the UK strategic community is itself innovating in response to these themes, particularly since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. This is not to argue that considerable challenges do not remain for strategy‐making in Britain. Most notably, these include: how to translate strategic innovation in departments and elsewhere into a coherent national strategic agenda; how to do this while maintaining institutional coordination and a shared sense of strategic purpose across government (and beyond); how to sustain and consolidate institutional expertise and experience in a rapidly changing civil service and at a time of continuing public austerity; and how to articulate and legitimate security policy decisions among a general public that is both disengaged from elite strategic discourse and sceptical of the efficacy of military force. Even so, the article concludes by arguing that it is possible to see the outline of an emergent and distinctive theory of action in contemporary British strategic practice, characterized by principles of adaptivity, anticipation, self‐organisation and nascent cross‐governmentalism.     

Believing in the USA: Derrida,Melville and the Great American Charlatan

ABSTRACT

This essay considers the relationship between the prophet and the charlatan, particularly as they figure in the contemporary American political landscape. It argues that at moments of democratic political crisis these figures arise and reveal the vacancy of sovereignty within the democratic model. The essay treats Herman Melville’s The Confidence-Man along with Jacques Derrida’s writings on democracy and the apocalyptic tone as resources in this endeavor. It considers as well why recent worries over the status of facts in the era of “fake news” have led to critiques of deconstruction.     

Principles in the pipeline: managing transatlantic values and interests in Central Asia

After a decade of relative neglect post‐Soviet Central Asia has become a foreign policy priority for the transatlantic community. Both the United States and Europe have engaged with the region in recent years in pursuit of new strategic interests, including maintaining military basing access in support of coalition operations in Afghanistan and securing the export of Central Asian oil and gas to the West. Despite this period of renewed engagement, however, the quality of democratic governance within the region remains poor, especially in comparison with other post‐communist regions that successfully completed their political transitions. In fact, the United States and the European Union have often tempered promoting their Central Asian democratization agendas in order to maintain access to these strategically important fixed assets. The transatlantic struggle to balance the pursuit of strategic interests and democratic values has been rendered more difficult by Russia's recent resurgence as a regional power. Backed by the Central Asian governments, Moscow has challenged the purpose and influence of western‐based international and non‐governmental organizations in the region, thereby further diminishing the transatlantic community's capacity to promote sustained democratic reforms.     

Holistic geoarchaeology in the Penobscot Valley,Maine, USA: context,scale, and interpretation

A holistic landscape approach to cultural resource analysis of a set of archaeological sites in the central Penobscot Valley led to inferences regarding the Holocene physical and biological environmental context. Targeted environmental studies include (1) examination of forest and wetland changes through time and (2) lake-level studies as a key to paleohydrology. These studies were combined with broad-scale geomorphic investigations and detailed stratigraphic analyses, and studies of archaeological sites and their artifact assemblages. Together, these studies provide a picture of dramatic changes to the physical and vegetational landscape. These included reestablishment of a major river following deglaciation, evolution of extensive lakes to uplands and peatlands, and a shifting mosaic of open and closed forest composed of a variety of hardwood and softwood species. Inferences based on buried soils exposed in archaeological excavations supported climatic interpretations based on vegetation and paleohydrology. As a result, this work allowed evaluation of (1) site formation and preservation processes and (2) occupational patterns. Site formation and preservation of Early Holocene sites can be linked to sedimentation by hydraulic damming upstream of rapids at the mouths of tributary streams. Shifting human land use reflected by changes in occupation patterns appears to correspond to changes in forest composition as well as wetland and stream evolution through time.     

Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency,Political Institutions,and Electoral Incentives

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits.     

Explaining the 2016 Islamist Mobilisation in Indonesia: Religious Intolerance,Militant Groups and the Politics of Accommodation

There has been an intense scholarly debate about what caused the unprecedented Islamist mass demonstrations in Indonesia in late 2016. Some scholars have argued that increasing intolerance and conservatism among the Muslim population are responsible, while others have disputed such notions, claiming that there is no evidence of widespread support for an Islamist agenda. In this article, we analyse a unique set of polling data to show that a) conservative attitudes among Indonesian Muslims were declining rather than increasing prior to the mobilisation, but that b) around a quarter of Indonesian Muslims do support an Islamist socio-political agenda. Importantly, we demonstrate that this core constituency of conservative Muslims has grown more educated, more affluent and better connected in the last decade or so, increasing its organisational capacity. We argue that this capacity was mobilised at a time when conservative Muslims felt excluded from the current polity, following the end of a decade of accommodation.     

Population,economy and domestic groups: the Kitui case

An attempt is made to assess the impact of population growth and labor migration on the size and form of households in Kitui, a district in the semi-arid zone of Eastern Province, Kenya. The data concern two neighborhoods, Ngangani and Syoyua, with contrasting population densities. Changes in households and household forms are described, with particular reference to the effect of land pressures. (summary in FRE)     

Securing China's core interests: the state of the debate in China

As China has grown stronger, some observers have identified an assertive turn in Chinese foreign policy. Evidence to support this argument includes the increasingly frequent evocation of China's ‘core interests’—a set of interests that represents the non‐negotiable bottom lines of Chinese foreign policy. When new concepts, ideas and political agendas are introduced in China, there is seldom a shared understanding of how they should be defined; the process of populating the concept with real meaning often takes place incrementally. This, the article argues, is what has happened with the notion of core interests. While there are some agreed bottom lines, what issues deserve to be defined (and thus protected) as core interests remains somewhat blurred and open to question. By using content analysis to study 108 articles by Chinese scholars, this article analyses Chinese academic discourse of China's core interests. The authors’ main finding is that ‘core interests’ is a vague concept in the Chinese discourse, despite its increasing use by the government to legitimize its diplomatic actions and claims. The article argues that this vagueness not only makes it difficult to predict Chinese diplomatic behaviour on key issues, but also allows external observers a rich source of opinions to select from to help support pre‐existing views on the nature of China as a global power.     

Cambridge Analytica,independent research and the national interest

This guest editorial addresses some of the ethical issues raised by the Cambridge Analytica case. The author criticizes expert opinions downplaying the scandal and links Cambridge Analytica's operations to the growth of academic research influenced by state security agendas.     

Irish Protestant migration and politics in the USA,Canada, and Australia: a debated legacy

In the USA, the rediscovery and celebration of Irish Protestant ancestry has extended in recent years to arguments by some scholars, political journalists, and politicians that there exists today an identifiable Scots-Irish socio-political legacy. This essay explores the history and cultural context of Irish Protestant migration and assesses its contemporary ramifications at the national level and in a critical state-level case (Kentucky). To assist in identifying the factors that have fostered or mitigated Irish Protestant identity/ies, comparisons will be made between the American experience and the very different ones of two other major recipient countries: Canada (and the province of Ontario) and Australia (and the state of New South Wales). Source regions, religious affiliation, the timing and magnitude of mass migration, and settlement patterns have all mattered in determining the socio-political roles played by Irish Protestants in the three former British colonies since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even more important have been the local economic and political contexts, including prevailing political party structures and competition. These factors explain why none of the three case countries, the USA included, bears witness to a coherent, identifiable Irish Protestant socio-political legacy.