“Love,Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject‐Making in Central Europe

Abstract: This paper uses NATO enlargement to examine the processes through which political subjects are made. Starting from the observation that the world's most powerful military alliance is increasingly framed not in terms of military defence, but in terms of democracy, freedom, and “European values”, the paper analyzes how this process works, and with what effects. It shows how NATO is, on the one hand, being made so common‐sense as to be boring—below political debate—while, on the other, being made existential and essential—above debate. The effect is a kind of banal militarism: an unremarkable assumption that the military apparatus is ethically grounded and capable for achieving peace. By showing how this assumption is produced and maintained, the paper highlights a key mechanism in the militarization of political life.     

Gender,race, militarism and remembrance: the everyday geopolitics of the poppy

This article offers a feminist analysis of how British military violence and war are, in part, made possible through everyday embodied and emotional practices of remembrance and forgetting. Focusing on recent iterations of the Royal British Legion’s Annual Poppy Appeal, I explore how the emotionality, and gendered and racial politics of collective mourning provide opportunities for the emergence of ‘communities of feeling’, through which differently gendered and racialised individuals can find their ‘place’ in the national story. I aim to show that in relying on such gendered and racial logics of emotion, the Poppy Appeal invites communities of feeling to remember military sacrifice, whilst forgetting the violence and bloodiness of actual warfare. In so doing, the poppy serves to reinstitute war as an activity in which masculinised, muscular ‘protectors’ necessarily make sacrifices for the feminised ‘protected’. The poppy is thus not only a site for examining the everyday politics of contemporary collective mourning, but its emotional, gendered and racialised foundations and how these work together to animate the geopolitics of war.     

The limits of civil society in militarised regimes: evidence from the Asia-Pacific

The nature of civil society is transformed by a strong military presence, which occurs in the Asia-Pacific region. While modern civil society survives under military rule through co-optation, veiled resistance or geography, traditional organisations may continue to threaten the state's dominance of political society. This article examines the nature of civil society in two countries in the Asia-Pacific that have recently emerged from direct military rule—Burma and Fiji. It considers the independence of civil society under military rule, how militaries take steps to safeguard their roles in political society, and how democratic postures change during transitions away from military rule. Understanding how militaries preserve their influence provides a better perspective of authoritarian resilience in the region and the limits to democratic reforms.     

Georgii Mirskii and Soviet Theories of Authoritarian Modernization

This article examines Soviet thinking about authoritarian modernization through the life and thought of Georgii Mirskii, a noted expert on Arab politics. Mirskii was a regular adviser and speechwriter for the Soviet Central Committee, and was also followed by the KGB for his criticism of Stalin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mirskii looked to the example of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser to develop a theory of military-led modernization. This article examines how Mirskii's faith in the ability of Third World militaries to function as modernizing forces changed over time. The course of military politics in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, when military coups proliferated, bringing to power violent and self-interested regimes, disabused Mirskii of any faith in military modernization. Examining Mirskii's thought not only sheds light on the ideas that motivated Khrushchev-era Soviet foreign and development policy, it also provides an illuminating comparison for better-studied theories of authoritarian modernization in the United States.     

A military camp in the middle of nowhere: mobilities,dislocation and the archaeology of a Second World War German military base in Finnish Lapland

This article discusses military mobilities and encampment, and associated themes such as dislocation and displacement of people, through the case of a Second World War German military camp in Finnish Lapland. The article describes the camp and its archaeological research and discusses various aspects of the camp and camp life in its particular subarctic ‘wilderness’ setting, framing the discussion within the themes of mobilities and dislocations, and especially their multiple impacts on the German troops and their multinational prisoners-of-war based in the camp. A particular emphasis is put on how mobilities and dislocation – in effect ‘being stuck’ in a northern wilderness – were intertwined and how the inhabitants of the camp coped with the situation, as well as how this is reflected in the different features of the camp itself and the archaeological material that the fieldwork produced.     

A Technocratic Vision of Empire: Lord Montagu and the Origins of British Air Power

This article advances the existing literature on British imperial aeronautics by explaining how Lord John Montagu’s extensive collaboration with military and government officials during the first decades of powered flight expanded the global distribution of the air forces and anticipated their important later role in facilitating international communication and security. In reconsidering problems of conquest and governance through an aeronautical perspective, Montagu strengthened critical junctures between British civil and military affairs, while his innovative employment of the new technology also complicated divisions between the metropolis and periphery in ways that would intensify the destructiveness of modern warfare across the planet.     

Social Reconstruction and the Radicalization of Development: Aid as a Relation of Global Liberal Governance

That democratic societies do not fall into conflict has become an axiom of contemporary international relations. Liberal societies, however, do not properly exist along the troubled margins of the global order. This absence has lent urgency to present efforts at social reconstruction. Whereas a couple of decades ago the principle of non–interference prevailed, this unfinished business has shaped a new will to intervene and transform societies as a whole. This article critically analyses the international will to govern through three interconnected themes. First, it examines accepted views on the nature of the new wars. These representations usually portray conflict as a form of social regression stemming from the failure of modernity. As such, they provide a moral justification for intervention. Second, an alternative view of the new wars — as a form of resistant and reflexive modernity — is developed. Made possible by the opportunities created by globalization, this resistance assumes the organizational form of network war. The essay concludes with an examination of the encounter between the international will to govern and the resistance of reflexive modernity. This encounter is the site of the post–Cold War reuniting of aid and politics. One important consequence has been the radicalization of development and its reinvention as a strategic tool of conflict resolution and social reconstruction. The use of aid as a tool of global liberal governance is fraught with difficulty; not least, the equivocal and contested nature of its influence. Rather than reconsideration, however, policy failure tends to result in a fresh round of reinvention and reform. The increasing normalization of violence is but one effect.     

Drawing (on) women’s military experiences and narratives – Israeli women soldiers’ challenges in the military environment

This article utilizes arts-based methods as a feminist methodology for understanding women’s experiences in military service, according to theories of feminist security studies. It explores how non-combatant women in the army retrospectively narrate stressful situations that happened during their military service. Using arts-based methods, we examine how they derive meaning from their experiences in a masculine, military environment, affected by ongoing conflict. This article analyzes twenty images drawn by Israeli women who served in the army in the previous 2–4 years. The women drew a stressful event from their military service, explained the image, and elaborated on how they coped with the situation. A content analysis of the pictures and the narratives produced three themes: the responsibility for others in life threatening situations, the military as a first professional work experience and the interaction between military and gender hierarchies. In general, women soldiers experienced the army as complex as they encountered their first adult work space in which they learned responsibility and skills of the ‘adults’ world’. However, they were also exposed to a rigid hierarchy and to stressful security situations typical of army contexts. While non-combat women soldiers were allegedly protected from the violence of the army, they are also indirectly exposed to the danger inherent in an army context. This analysis goes beyond the hero narrative, and moves into taboo territories of young women’s narratives and experiences in the military.     

New military femininities: humanitarian violence and the gendered work of war among U.S. servicewomen

This article examines ‘military femininity’ in new gendered forms of labor employed by the U.S. military in the post-September 11 wars. Between 2003 and 2013, when women were technically banned from direct assignment to ground combat units, the U.S. military deployed all-female counterinsurgent teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. In various forms, these teams searched Iraqi women at checkpoints and in home raids, provided medical assistance to Afghan women and children, and participated in highly combative special operations missions alongside Army Rangers and Green Berets in Afghanistan. Recent literature on the gendering of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan focuses mainly on the teams’ deployment of humanitarianism and affect as weapons of war, while older feminist critiques analyze women’s marginalization within military institutions. This article reconceptualizes military femininity, departing from the prevailing marginalization and humanitarian frameworks. Drawing on military and policy documents, first-hand observations of military trainings, and interviews with military trainers, I show how women were integrated into ground combat through the promotion of certain gender essentialisms, such as feminine domesticity, alongside military violence. A new form of military femininity has emerged that eschews humanitarian rhetoric, and instead emphasizes servicewomen’s lethality.     

Rethinking security: a critical analysis of the Strategic Defence and Security Review

In 2010 the coalition government conducted a major review of defence and security policy. This article explores the review process from a critical perspective by examining and challenging the state‐centrism of prevailing conceptions of current policy reflected in the quest to define and perform a particular ‘national role’ in contrast to a human‐centric framework focused on the UK citizen. It argues that shifting the focus of policy to the individual makes a qualitative difference to how we think about requirements for the UK's armed forces and challenges ingrained assumptions about defence and security in relation to military operations of choice and attendant expensive, expeditionary war‐fighting capabilities. In particular, it confronts the prevailing narrative that UK national security‐as‐global risk management must be met by securing the state against pervasive multidimensional risk through military force, that military power projection capabilities are a vital source of international influence and national prestige and that the exercise of UK military power constitutes a ‘force for good’ for the long‐term human security needs of citizens in both the intervened and intervening state.     

Militarisation,universities and the university armed service units

This paper asks what militarisation looks like when encountered in university settings, using the example of the UK university armed service units. It identifies a specific definition of militarisation, which is then used as a framework to explore the USUs. The USUs have been subject to critique as emblematic of militarisation, and thus problematic. The paper looks at practices where militarisation can be identified as evident on university campuses, such as in disciplinary engagements with military institutions and activities, as well as flows of funding and knowledge. We show how the military-university nexus problematizes the idea of separate and distinctive military and civilian spheres which pervades much of the discourse around military involvement at universities, and highlight the generative and creative capabilities of militarisation as co-constituted within the military-university nexus. The paper then examines in detail how the process of militarisation works in practice through the USUs. This confirms the importance of individual agency to a conceptualisation of militarisation. In conclusion, we argue for the continued utility of process-focussed understandings of militarisation which emphasise how such processes are generative of social relations. We emphasise the necessity of capturing the nuance and complexity through which processes work not least around the engagements of people as active agents with such processes. We also note the potential significance of scale to future conceptualisations of militarisation.     

The US military base network and contemporary colonialism: Power projection, resistance and the quest for operational unilateralism

This article explores the contemporary global network of US military bases. This paper examines how the geography of this network is shaped not only by military objectives but also by resistance from allied governments and communities adjacent to bases. Using examples from Guam, Puerto Rico, Okinawa and other locales this paper examines how local resistances to US bases have caused the Department of Defense to increasingly rely on non-sovereign islands as sites for bases. These sites, military strategists believe, will enable the military to train without hindrance and to operate without the need for consultation with allies. These colonies, however, are also sites were military activities are actively resisted. The resulting base network is thus shaped not only by global military priorities, but also by an increasingly globalized network of local social movements resisting militarization.     

Indigenous myths and nation building in Latin America

In Latin America, ethnicity is equated with indigenity. It is an objective of this article to review the legacy of Anthony Smith regarding the vitality of the ethnic past and the myth of origin, as the core of his theory of nationalism based on the weight of ethnocentrism. To this end, we address two routes, the use of the ethnic past and ethnicity by nationalists and founders of the state and, how indigenous intellectuals, on the other, have found a reinvention of their identities through various myths of Amerindian origin. Ethnic myths and the use of the ethnic past have been accepted, denied or rejected by nationalists, while indigenous peoples adhere to their own myths or seek to reinvent them. Mythical information is a component of identity but also requires institutions to disseminate such information among the group.     

20世纪初期芬兰人马达汉入疆考察细节及其分析

1906年8月,芬兰籍职业军人马达汉接受俄军总参谋部的军事任务,组成一个以自己为主的小型考察队,从中亚进入中国新疆境内进行军事情况收集活动,历时一年两个月。到达北京后,他进入俄国驻北京公使馆,整理完成了呈送上级的军事考察报告(含附图)。本文注重研究考察队在新疆境内的许多细节:如何从军事地形着眼,如何使用仪器,如何广泛取材形成一部具有军事情报价值的日记体著作。百年后这部著作的军事情报时效性已大为降低,但仍可作为颇具参考价值的历史地理资料加以使用。     

Illiberal peacebuilding in a hybrid regime. Authoritarian strategies for conflict containment in Myanmar

The post-Cold War period has seen the rise of international liberal peacebuilding, as an overarching framework for international interventions in intrastate conflicts. In contrast, the current period is marked by decline of liberal peacebuilding, and a simultaneous rise of domestic illiberal peacebuilding. This has created a gap between the predominant theoretical and policy framework and the actual form of peacebuilding in many conflict-ridden societies. The present article addresses this challenge through a contextual case study of illiberal peacebuilding in Myanmar. The case study shows how a dominant state actor – the military (Tatmadaw) – has used both coercion and co-optation to contain armed resistance against militarized and centralized statebuilding and thereby strengthen the state's territorial control and authority. While the SLORC/SPDC military junta (1988–2011) sought to contain ethnic armed organizations through military offensives, ceasefire agreements and illiberal peacebuilding, the military based USDP-government (2011–2015) institutionalized a hybrid regime as a framework for political transformation of EAOs, and tolerated a degree of dual territorial, administrative and resource control at the local scale. These clientelist measures failed to address the substantive issues behind Myanmar's multiple and protracted conflicts. They were also combined with military offensives against non-ceasefire groups and war by other means in ceasefire areas. Moreover, the case study demonstrates that the Tatmadaw used its tutelary power to obstructs substantive conflict resolution through negotiated state reforms. Myanmar's peace initiatives during the last three decades should thus be understood as illiberal strategies for containing ethnic armed organizations rather than attempts at substantive conflict resolution.     

NATO's Triple Challenge

NATO's future is again the subject of speculation and debate despite its having fought a recent and apparently successful war in Kosovo. This article proposes that there are three aspects to this challenge. First, NATO is facing a series of dilemmas in its relations with non‐members: how should it manage relations with Russia, and with the applicants for membership? The authors argue that NATO should seek to develop a consolidationist posture. The second challenge is that of developing an EU–NATO partnership in the light of the Helsinki Headline Goals. This, it is proposed, can be developed through a division of labour. The third task, that of military restructuring, is overshadowed by the complexities of processing a working European military structure. In conclusion, the authors suggest that a strategy for the alliance, a key component of the Cold War, but subsequently lost, can be refashioned from the above elements.     

The first two centuries of Saint Martin of Tours

This paper presents a critical examination of the evidence for the cult of St Martin in the fifth and sixth centuries. Through examination of the various manifestations of Martin's cult, it argues that the cult had different meanings and significance at different times and places, and that the commonly perceived popularity of Martin's cult was in fact an illusion created by the constant reinvention and promotion of various interpretations of Martin by interested parties, from aristocratic ascetics to politically active bishops.