Paving the Way for Baghdad: The US Invasion of Panama, 1989

ABSTRACT

In December 1989, the United States unleashed its might against Panama. The invasion, Operation Just Cause, was the largest military operation conducted by the US since Vietnam and its first post-Cold War intervention. US troops invaded a foreign country, quickly occupied it, and withdrew before engendering a violent insurgency. Although George H. W. Bush authorized an illegal invasion which invited international denunciation, its quick and successful resolution concealed serious issues. Senior officials who served Bush senior, but who badly failed his son, also drew important lessons from the invasion. Just Cause demonstrated how a small and mobile force using overwhelming firepower could decapitate an enemy regime and establish the conditions for the development of a democratic state. The invasion also prefigured the justification for US interventionism in the post-Cold War: spreading democracy and protecting human rights. An easy victory on the surface, the Panamanian intervention paved the way for a greater calamity on the Tigris decades later. Just Cause provided US policy-makers with a false sense of confidence and optimism that paved the path for the invasion of Baghdad in 2003.     

Club Talk: Gossip,Masculinity and Oral Communities in Late Nineteenth‐Century London

Gossip is not only a guilty pleasure; it is also an important tool of social control. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nineteenth‐century gentlemen's clubs of London. This article looks at the private lives of elite men whose gossip helped shape class and gender ideals. Archival documents, private memoirs and periodical literature provide both an insider and outsider vision of a very private world. Looking at how men gossiped points to codes of gentlemanly behaviour, the importance of homosocial life, and the place of oral culture in a modern, literate age.     

Men Making Home: Masculinity and Domesticity in Eighteenth‐Century Britain

Eighteenth‐century England is, for many scholars, the time and place where modern domesticity was invented; the point at which ‘home’ became a key concept sustained by new literary imaginings and new social practices. But as gendered individuals, and certainly compared to women, men are notable for their absence in accounts of the eighteenth‐century domestic interior. In this essay, I examine the relationship between constructs of masculinity and meanings of home. During the eighteenth century, ‘home’ came to mean more than one's dwelling; it became a multi‐faceted state of being, encompassing the emotional, physical, moral and spatial. Masculinity intersected with domesticity at all levels and stages in its development. The nature of men's engagements with home were understood through a model of ‘oeconomy’, which brought together the home and the world, primarily through men's activities. Indeed, this essay proposes that attention to how this multi‐faceted eighteenth‐century ‘home’ was made in relation to masculinity shifts our understanding of home as a private and feminine space opposed to an ‘outside’ and public world.     

Consultancy,Neo‐Liberal Conservatism and the Politics of Anti‐Politics

What a lot of nonsense about the ANU and Australian universities in general (sites of neoliberal thought indeed?!) I find it odd that people who have willingly spent their professional lives and made careers in Australian universities suddenly want to bite the hand that is (still) feeding them! (Finlayson, J. 14 December 2010, AASNet email post)     

Normative Justifications for Liberal Nationalism: Justice,Democracy and National Identity

The essay examines a prominent normative defence of nationalism, which links shared nationality with the attainment of the goods of liberal justice and democratic governance. The essay first considers the argument that liberal values, and especially the value of social justice, will best be promoted in states whose members share a common nationality. In its strong form, this argument is vulnerable to counter‐instances. A weaker version, which claims that in states divided in terms of national identities, social justice may be precarious over the long term, is more plausible. The second part of the essay argues that there is a close relationship between democracy and shared national identity. This section spells out precisely how a common national identity is helpful both for representative institutions to function properly and for widespread participation on the part of ordinary citizens.     

Sport,National Identity and Public Policy

Abstract. The paper examines the use made of sport by governments to help manage identity. It begins with an exploration of the relationship between sport and ethnic culture and continues with an analysis of the ways in which sports can be used to aid the state and achieve its objectives of legitimacy, territorial integrity, and citizen commitment. This introduction is followed by an examination of the particular problems of identity faced by Canada, Ireland and Britain and the sports policies adopted by the governments of the countries is evaluated. It is concluded that while sport possesses a powerful symbolism that can be exploited on occasion to great effect, the malleability of sports symbolism often undermines its capacity to exert a lasting effect on national identity.