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91. Soccer: Moulding the Middle East and North Africa

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
Abstract:
Nowhere in the world has sports in general and soccer in particular played such a key role in the development of a region than in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, the nexus of sports, politics and society is one area that Middle East studies with few exceptions have ignored. Similarly, sports studies have focused on all parts of the world with one exception: the Middle East and North Africa. Nonetheless, sports and particularly soccer has been in various parts of the Middle East key to nation formation, nation building, regime formation, regime survival and the struggles for human, gender and labour rights. This working paper is an attempt to fill a gap in the literature and contribute to the development of theory on the role of sports in the Middle East and North Africa.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Nationalism, Labor Issues, Sports, and State Building
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, and North Africa

92. Russian Ideology After Crimea

Author:
Andrei Kolesnikov
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Following the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the Russian public has embraced an increasingly conservative and nationalistic ideology. Any repudiation of this ideology, let alone the transformation of the country as a whole, will only happen if demand for change from the bottom coincides with a desire for modernization from the top. The new social contract demands that the Russian people surrender their freedom in return for Crimea and a sense of national pride. It seizes on changes that have already occurred in the minds of many Russians. The new ideology is based on a deliberate recycling of archaic forms of mass consciousness, a phenomenon that can be termed the sanctification of unfreedom. Confined to a besieged fortress, surrounded by external enemies, and faced with a domestic fifth column, the people of Russia have begun to experience Stockholm syndrome and have thrown their support behind the commander of the fortress, President Vladimir Putin. They have adopted his logic and even defended his interests, believing that they are members of his team. Freedom of expression has been significantly curtailed through a system of bans and strict forms of punishment, including criminal prosecution, which have both didactic and deterrent components. Pressure on democratic media outlets has also increased drastically. Ideology in Russia is a mass product that is easy to absorb; it is legitimized by constant references to the past, glorious traditions, and occasionally fictional historical events.
Topic:
Human Rights, Nationalism, Political Economy, Governance, and Authoritarianism
Political Geography:
Russia

93. Religion and Secularism in the Middle East: A Primer

Author:
Aaron Rock-Singer
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
Religion was a pillar of pre-modern political identity in the Middle East, arising out of Muslims’ understanding of Islam’s foundational moment and state institutions that developed with the spread of Islamic Empire. Beginning at the turn of the 19th century, European colonial powers and indigenous reformers questioned the centrality of religious identity; instead, it was to be the nation that defined the political community. Since then, the nationalist project has permeated 20th century ideological conflicts in the region, equally shaping the claims of secularists and Islamists. Today, advocates of religious change refer back to early Islamic history as they seek to place religious over national identity, yet they, like their competitors, are unmistakably shaped by the secular nationalist project.
Topic:
Islam, Nationalism, Post Colonialism, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East and Arab Countries

94. Post-Colonial States and the Struggle for Identity in the Middle East since World War Two

Author:
Samuel Helfont
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Abstract:
The term “post-colonial” has presented a seminal problem for historians of the 20th century Middle East. As this essay will detail, debates over the term have provided an important axis around which discussions of political identity revolve. Following World War Two European power in the Middle East crumbled and a number of post-colonial states emerged. These states often justified their existence in terms of ideologies that were tied to specific post-colonial, political identities. Endless debates have occurred over how much emphasis to put on the post-colonial nature of these states and their political identities. In this essay, I will discuss whether a state’s status as post-colonial matters. If so, how? And what are the consequences? Following a general discussion of debates over post-colonialism, will look more closely at three case studies: Egypt, Iraq, and Iran.
Topic:
Development, Islam, Nationalism, and Post Colonialism
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and Arab Countries

95. Strategic Insights: The Will To Fight

Author:
Dr. M. Chris Mason
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Events on world battlefields over the past two years should give the U.S. Army pause to reconsider the entire Foreign Internal Defense (FID) mission. The seemingly unarguable axiom that "good training makes good soldiers" has been proven to be not always true. Good training does not always make good soldiers. If the definition of a good soldier is "a member of the armed forces who stands and fights for his or her country," then a good deal of money has been spent in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere without measurable and sustainable success. More than a third of all Afghan defense forces trained with U.S. taxpayer money desert in Afghanistan each year, and in Iraq they simply disappear.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Education, Nationalism, Military Strategy, Labor Issues, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and United States of America

96. Reclaiming the Grassland for the Cheetah: Science and Nature Conservation in India

Author:
Ghazala Shahabuddin
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The role of scientists in influencing the aims and priorities of biological conservation in developing countries has been a topic of debate and needs elucidation. The Asiatic cheetah reintroduction plan in India sparked much discussion on the pros and cons of attempting to revive the population of a large carnivore that had been missing from the landscape for over half a century. This paper traces the history of cheetah reintroduction with the aim of exploring the relationships amongst the constituencies of scientists, politicians, local communities and the bureaucracy. This paper suggests that the decision to reintroduce the Asiatic cheetah in India was motivated by political symbolism and had little grounding in scientific rigour. Science was used as a legitimizing tool for a politically influenced conservation goal which had little space for socio-economic constraints or academic rigour. While there are many strands of wildlife conservation emerging in India, the dominant paradigm upheld by biologists continues to be negligent of both scientific and social concerns.
Topic:
Nationalism, Science and Technology, Conservation, and Nature
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

97. A Comparative Analysis of Imperial Japan's Predicament in China and U.S. Quagmire in Post-Saddam Iraq: Similarities, Lessons and Implications

Author:
Matsahiro Matsumura
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
This study will first present a series of striking similarities between the imperial Japanese predicament in China and the contemporary U.S. quagmire in post-Saddam Iraq. Second, the study will provide a theoretical perspective on why the two cases share such commonalities. Third, the study will explore the implications of the perspective to international politics, with a focus on the future of the U.S. hegemony. The study is based on the basic understanding that the developing world across regions today has continued to suffer the ongoing single macro-historical process consequent upon the breakdowns of empires as the once-predominant organizational mode of human societies. The analysis argues for the central importance of a stable national identity for modernization and development as well as freedom and democracy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Imperialism, Nationalism, Military Intervention, and Modernization
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Iraq, Middle East, and Asia

98. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in the South Caucasus

Author:
Mehmet Fatih Öztarsu
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The Soviet Union, which has two contradictory definitions (“Prison of Peoples” and “Free Association of Peoples”), is seen as the perpetrator of many ethnic and regional problems in Eurasia today. Its management of culture with numerous ethnic and religious elements and an ideological perspective that deflects criticism are the most important issues to focus on to understand the Soviet Union. The ideals imposed on social and cultural life by communist ideology – nationalism, religious movements, local conflicts and decomposition – tell the true story of the Soviet geography.
Topic:
Nationalism
Political Geography:
Eurasia, Soviet Union, and South Caucasus

99. Relations informelles entre Pékin et Taipei : l’essor de la diplomatie académique dans le détroit de Taiwan (Informal Relations Between Beijing and Taipei: The Expansion of Academic Diplomacy in the Taiwan Strait)

Author:
Alice Ekman
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Since the Kuomintang returned to power in 2008, Beijing has adjusted its communication strategy towards Taiwan, while maintaining the same long-term goal of reunification. This strategy of rapprochement by seduction rather than by threat promotes the rapid growth of exchanges between the Chinese and Taiwanese populations at all levels: students, tourists, farmers, businessmen, academics, retired diplomats and military, politicians, etc. Especially, the multiplication of meetings between academics of both countries is creating new channels of communication over the Strait, allowing on the one hand to compensate for the lack of formal diplomacy between Beijing and Taipei, and on the other hand to compete with informal diplomatic links existing between Taiwan and several of its partners (US and Japan, mainly). These communication channels could ultimately reinforce Beijing’s strategy – and China keeps investing heavily in their development – but could also be used as a conduit to prevent and to manage crisis would tensions reappear in the Strait.
Topic:
Nationalism, Sovereignty, Borders, Identities, and State
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, and Asia

100. Entre européanisation et fragmentation, quel modèle de développement pour le territoire ukrainien? (Between Europeanization and fragmentation, what model of development for the Ukrainian territory?)

Author:
Gilles Lepesant
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
One week before the third Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius on November 28-29, 2013, Ukraine suspended the preparation of an association agreement with the European Union, which had been under negotiation since 2007. When the agreement was finally signed in June 2014, President Yanukovych had fled the country under people’s pressure, and the integrity of Ukraine was challenged in the East by separatists and their Russian allies. These events came paradoxically at a time when the country's cohesion seemed stronger than in the 1990s. Far from being divided into two parts, Ukraine consists of the pieces of broken empires that all have good reasons to join in the state, as recent as this one may be. Indeed, its geography, electoral or economic, does not show a split between two blocks, but various lines of division that do not necessarily herald the breaking up of the state. Since the independence, this diversity had never been translated into new institutions: for several reasons, the reshaping of the centralized regime inherited from the Soviet era was deemed untimely by the country’s political forces. Presented as a priority by the members of the Parliament elected in 2014, the reform of territorial government is being implemented while Ukraine’s driving regions are either paralyzed or threatened by war.
Topic:
Nationalism, Sovereignty, War, Territorial Disputes, Europeanization, Memory, Borders, and State
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and European Union