Chapter 5 Basic Webscraping
5.1 The rvest package
5.1.2 Read the URL
## [1] "xml_document" "xml_node"## {html_document}
## <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:og="http://ogp.me/ns#" lang="en-US">
## [1] <head>\n<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8 ...
## [2] <body data-rsssl="1" class="archive category category-articles category-5 ...## {xml_nodeset (5)}
## [1] <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a- ...
## [2] <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-u ...
## [3] <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/14/opinion-kazakhstans-dark-herita ...
## [4] <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/13/legitimacy-and-nationalism-chin ...
## [5] <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/business-and-human-rights-overc ...## [1] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a-testing-ground-for-european-sovereignty/"
## [2] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-ukraine-as-a-russian-land/"
## [3] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/14/opinion-kazakhstans-dark-heritage/"
## [4] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/13/legitimacy-and-nationalism-chinas-motivations-and-the-dangers-of-assumptions/"
## [5] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/business-and-human-rights-overcoming-old-paradigms-pushing-for-new-frontiers/"df$title <- page %>%
html_nodes(".heading a") %>%
html_attr("title")
df$authors <- page %>%
html_nodes(".h--meta a") %>%
html_text()Can you get the date?1
5.1.3 Ploting
df %>%
ggplot()+
geom_bar(aes(as.factor(opinion)),
fill="#56B4E9",
width = .6)+
scale_x_discrete(labels = c("No","Yes"))+
scale_y_continuous(breaks= scales::pretty_breaks())+
labs(x = "Opinion Article",
y = NULL,
title = "Some Scraped E-IR Articles",
caption = sprintf("Scraped on: %s", Sys.Date())
)+
theme_classic()
5.2 Cleaning Text
## [1] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a-testing-ground-for-european-sovereignty/"## [1] "Opinion – The Libyan Border as a Testing Ground for European Sovereignty\n\n \n \n \n Robert Palmer \n \n\n \n Download PDF\n \n Jan 19 2022\n • \r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t0\r\n\t\t\t views\n \n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n Nicolas Economou/Shutterstock\n \n \n \n \n \n \nMigrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter the EU out with regulated processes. The journey is dangerous, requiring a departure from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe’s shores. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become one of the main gateways for illegal migration to Europe. The EU aims to lock the North African nation down as a transit point by deploying a border assistance mission. Immediately, this tactic is a means of tackling problematic immigration beyond Europe’s borders. But it is also an opportunity – to be won or lost – that could play a crucial role in defining and asserting the bloc’s as-of-yet-undetermined stance on ‘sovereignty’.\n\n\n\nWith so many migrants travelling through Libya, smuggling and trafficking networks there have erupted. Those on the ground claim the country has become a nexus of coercion, torture, and deprivation. The instability unleashed by the Libyan civil war has dragged roughly 650,000 migrants into dire conditions. Those living in the Libya-based migrant community are reportedly “vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions,” while migrants held in detention centres there “may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water.”\n\n\n\nPressure on the EU is mounting. On the one hand, there are the practical considerations — a collection of nations struggling with the flow of people simply trying to escape horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, there is the challenge of dealing with the problem in a humane and distinctively European way: this last part, in fact, might create the greater trouble for lawmakers.\n\n\n\nA United Nations report states that, in all likelihood, the lack of human rights protection for migrants at sea, \n\n\n\nis not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, the European Union Member States and institutions, and other actors.\n\n\n\nTo its credit, the EU has made clear that it plans to improve the situation. While this move is a vital one, it is also a crucial moment for a nascent idea of European sovereignty. The situation unfolds in a dynamic context under the shadow of a crescent China and a waning, less-than dependable ally in the United States. 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A European Commission action plan states that:\n\n\n\nThe Commission intends to step up border management support at Libya’s Southern border, while in parallel strengthening cross-border cooperation between Libya and its bordering countries in the South, including Niger.\n\n\n\nIncreasingly, voices in the EU call for either a greater level of integration than ever before, or a move in the opposite direction, towards disparate nationalism. Brexit, for its part, has demonstrated that even if presented as greener pastures, the going-it-alone strategy is a risky one at best.\n\n\n\nThe German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, for his part has indicated an interest in pursuing a German vision of European sovereignty – but it is one that appears to diverge from equivalent notions in France. Though Emanuel Macron may lead the charge on a more militant, assertive vision of Europe, he faces a presidential election in April 2022. While France might hold the 6-month rotating stewardship of the EU, there are no guarantees that French centrist political ambitions will live to see it through.\n\n\n\nThe necessity of a response to the encroachment of Russia on the eastern flank, adds a certain preparatory atmosphere. In this sense, the migrant conundrum offers a formative testing ground for defining and assessing practicalities around sovereignty. But, as with many such crises, the adequacy of the means employed must support the scale of ambitions. And indeed, many believe that it is only the bloc’s united size that will allow it to remain relevant and active on the global stage. “The choice is not between national and European sovereignty,” wrote Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former advisor to Macron, back in December 2019. “It is between European sovereignty and none at all.”\n\n\n\nFor all of these reasons, the Libyan border situation is one that calls for caution. With European sovereignty far from set, any reliance on foreign contractors to bolster security could quickly become problematic. For instance, were the EU to assign projects to companies governed by foreign powers, this could inadvertently, both symbolically and strategically, cede sovereignty to foreign masters. Given the increasing sense of a free-for-all in the realm of private military contractors, confidence is in decline. That is why outsourcing to non-member states could get even more complicated.\n\n\n\nA European Parliament resolution warned that “no local PSC [private security company] should be employed or subcontracted in conflict regions” and that the EU should favour companies “genuinely based in Europe” and subjected to EU law. However, this resolution has limited scope and is non-binding, therefore its “impact in the theatre remains unclear”.\n\n\n\nThe EU has already had some unfortunate episodes which highlighted the issue of handing out contracts to foreign companies, either local entities or non-European ones working abroad. One noteworthy example was the use of the Canadian firm GardaWorld and British firm G4S in places like Afghanistan. Even though Gardaworld was partnering with the French security company Amarante, Gardaworld always kept leadership in field operations. As a result, the companies’ complete inability to support and evacuate their security personnel during the Kabul Airlift even made headlines last year. The ambiguous role private companies are taking in modern conflicts underlines the need for the EU to work with companies bound by EU law.\n\n\n\nFollowing the 2015 migrant crisis, consensus on EU immigration policy took a bruising. And even now, any future definition remains in flux – much like the European project as a whole.Such considerations give an indication of the subtle forces at play in the skirmish for European sovereignty. It remains to be seen what course officials plot on the already incendiary Libyan border.\nFurther Reading on E-International RelationsThe European Union Immigration Agreement with Libya: Out of Sight, Out of Mind?\n\nThe EU-Libya Migrant Deal: A Deal of Convenience\n\nAssessing the Responsibility of EU Officials for Crimes Against Migrants in Libya\n\nFortress Europe? Porous Borders and EU Dependence on Neighbour Countries\n\nOpinion – A New Pact on Migration and Asylum in Europe\n\nEuropean Union Readmission Agreements: Deportation as a Gateway to Displacement?\nPGRpdiBjbGFzcz0iYWR2YWRzLWhlYWRsaW5lIiBzdHlsZT0ibWFyZ2luLWxlZnQ6IGF1dG87IG1hcmdpbi1yaWdodDogYXV0bzsgdGV4dC1hbGlnbjogY2VudGVyOyBtYXJnaW4tYm90dG9tOiAyMnB4OyAiIGlkPSJhZHZhZHMtMzQwMDU3Njg5Ij48c2NyaXB0IGFzeW5jIHNyYz0iLy9wYWdlYWQyLmdvb2dsZXN5bmRpY2F0aW9uLmNvbS9wYWdlYWQvanMvYWRzYnlnb29nbGUuanM/Y2xpZW50PWNhLXB1Yi02ODI3MTA2NzY0MDQyNzM1IiBjcm9zc29yaWdpbj0iYW5vbnltb3VzIj48L3NjcmlwdD48aW5zIGNsYXNzPSJhZHNieWdvb2dsZSIgc3R5bGU9ImRpc3BsYXk6aW5saW5lLWJsb2NrO3dpZHRoOjcyOHB4O2hlaWdodDo5MHB4OyIgCmRhdGEtYWQtY2xpZW50PSJjYS1wdWItNjgyNzEwNjc2NDA0MjczNSIgCmRhdGEtYWQtc2xvdD0iNDcxMDkzMTAwMCI+PC9pbnM+IAo8c2NyaXB0PiAKKGFkc2J5Z29vZ2xlID0gd2luZG93LmFkc2J5Z29vZ2xlIHx8IFtdKS5wdXNoKHt9KTsgCjwvc2NyaXB0Pgo8L2Rpdj48c2NyaXB0Piggd2luZG93LmFkdmFuY2VkX2Fkc19yZWFkeSB8fCBqUXVlcnkoIGRvY3VtZW50ICkucmVhZHkgKS5jYWxsKCBudWxsLCBmdW5jdGlvbigpIHthZHZhZHMubW92ZSgiI2FkdmFkcy0zNDAwNTc2ODkiLCAiaDEiLCB7IG1ldGhvZDogImluc2VydEJlZm9yZSIgfSk7fSk7PC9zY3JpcHQ+\n \n\n \n\n \n \n \n \n \n About The Author(s)\n \n Robert Palmer is a freelance business advisor and defense expert.\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n TagsEuropean UnionLibyaMigration\n\n \n \n "text <- text %>% str_replace_all("[\r\n]" , " ")
text <- text %>% str_remove("(.*)(Shutterstock|Loading views)")
text <- text %>% str_remove_all("[:graph:]{50,1000}")
text <- text %>% str_remove_all("[:space:]{2,}")
text <- text %>% str_remove_all("(Further Reading|References)(.*)")| url | title | authors | opinion | text |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a-testing-ground-for-european-sovereignty/ | Opinion – The Libyan Border as a Testing Ground for European Sovereignty | Robert Palmer | 1 | Migrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter the EU out with regulated processes. The journey is dangerous, requiring a departure from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe’s shores. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become one of the main gateways for illegal migration to Europe. The EU aims to lock the North African nation down as a transit point by deploying a border assistance mission. Immediately, this tactic is a means of tackling problematic immigration beyond Europe’s borders. But it is also an opportunity – to be won or lost – that could play a crucial role in defining and asserting the bloc’s as-of-yet-undetermined stance on ‘sovereignty’.With so many migrants travelling through Libya, smuggling and trafficking networks there have erupted. Those on the ground claim the country has become a nexus of coercion, torture, and deprivation. The instability unleashed by the Libyan civil war has dragged roughly 650,000 migrants into dire conditions. Those living in the Libya-based migrant community are reportedly “vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions,” while migrants held in detention centres there “may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water.”Pressure on the EU is mounting. On the one hand, there are the practical considerations — a collection of nations struggling with the flow of people simply trying to escape horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, there is the challenge of dealing with the problem in a humane and distinctively European way: this last part, in fact, might create the greater trouble for lawmakers.A United Nations report states that, in all likelihood, the lack of human rights protection for migrants at sea,is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, the European Union Member States and institutions, and other actors.To its credit, the EU has made clear that it plans to improve the situation. While this move is a vital one, it is also a crucial moment for a nascent idea of European sovereignty. The situation unfolds in a dynamic context under the shadow of a crescent China and a waning, less-than dependable ally in the United States.European Commission action plan states that:The Commission intends to step up border management support at Libya’s Southern border, while in parallel strengthening cross-border cooperation between Libya and its bordering countries in the South, including Niger.Increasingly, voices in the EU call for either a greater level of integration than ever before, or a move in the opposite direction, towards disparate nationalism. Brexit, for its part, has demonstrated that even if presented as greener pastures, the going-it-alone strategy is a risky one at best.The German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, for his part has indicated an interest in pursuing a German vision of European sovereignty – but it is one that appears to diverge from equivalent notions in France. Though Emanuel Macron may lead the charge on a more militant, assertive vision of Europe, he faces a presidential election in April 2022. While France might hold the 6-month rotating stewardship of the EU, there are no guarantees that French centrist political ambitions will live to see it through.The necessity of a response to the encroachment of Russia on the eastern flank, adds a certain preparatory atmosphere. In this sense, the migrant conundrum offers a formative testing ground for defining and assessing practicalities around sovereignty. But, as with many such crises, the adequacy of the means employed must support the scale of ambitions. And indeed, many believe that it is only the bloc’s united size that will allow it to remain relevant and active on the global stage. “The choice is not between national and European sovereignty,” wrote Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former advisor to Macron, back in December 2019. “It is between European sovereignty and none at all.”For all of these reasons, the Libyan border situation is one that calls for caution. With European sovereignty far from set, any reliance on foreign contractors to bolster security could quickly become problematic. For instance, were the EU to assign projects to companies governed by foreign powers, this could inadvertently, both symbolically and strategically, cede sovereignty to foreign masters. Given the increasing sense of a free-for-all in the realm of private military contractors, confidence is in decline. That is why outsourcing to non-member states could get even more complicated.A European Parliament resolution warned that “no local PSC [private security company] should be employed or subcontracted in conflict regions” and that the EU should favour companies “genuinely based in Europe” and subjected to EU law. However, this resolution has limited scope and is non-binding, therefore its “impact in the theatre remains unclear”.The EU has already had some unfortunate episodes which highlighted the issue of handing out contracts to foreign companies, either local entities or non-European ones working abroad. One noteworthy example was the use of the Canadian firm GardaWorld and British firm G4S in places like Afghanistan. Even though Gardaworld was partnering with the French security company Amarante, Gardaworld always kept leadership in field operations. As a result, the companies’ complete inability to support and evacuate their security personnel during the Kabul Airlift even made headlines last year. The ambiguous role private companies are taking in modern conflicts underlines the need for the EU to work with companies bound by EU law.Following the 2015 migrant crisis, consensus on EU immigration policy took a bruising. And even now, any future definition remains in flux – much like the European project as a whole.Such considerations give an indication of the subtle forces at play in the skirmish for European sovereignty. It remains to be seen what course officials plot on the already incendiary Libyan border. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-ukraine-as-a-russian-land/ | Opinion – Putin’s Obsession with Ukraine as a ‘Russian Land’ | Taras Kuzio | 1 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/14/opinion-kazakhstans-dark-heritage/ | Opinion – Kazakhstan’s Dark Heritage | Martin Duffy | 1 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/13/legitimacy-and-nationalism-chinas-motivations-and-the-dangers-of-assumptions/ | Legitimacy and Nationalism: China’s Motivations and the Dangers of Assumptions | Lewis Eves | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/business-and-human-rights-overcoming-old-paradigms-pushing-for-new-frontiers/ | Business and Human Rights: Overcoming Old Paradigms, Pushing for New Frontiers | Florian Wettstein | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/opinion-a-daunting-agenda-for-frances-eu-presidency/ | Opinion – A Daunting Agenda for France’s EU Presidency | Alexander Brotman | 1 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/05/rethinking-critical-ir-towards-a-plurilogue-of-cosmologies/ | Rethinking Critical IR: Towards a Plurilogue of Cosmologies | Hartmut Behr and Giorgio Shani | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/05/re-thinking-deterrence-in-gray-zone-conflict/ | Rethinking Deterrence in Gray Zone Conflict | Catherine Delafield, Sarah Fishbein, J Andrés Gannon, Erik Gartzke, Jon Lindsay, Peter Schram and Estelle Shaya | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/03/chaos-and-corruption-in-west-africa-lessons-from-sierra-leone/ | Chaos and Corruption in West Africa: Lessons from Sierra Leone | Martin Duffy | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/31/opinion-looking-behind-the-delimitation-exercise-in-jammu-and-kashmir/ | Opinion – Looking Behind the Delimitation Exercise in Jammu and Kashmir | Maqsood Hussain | 1 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/28/debating-the-legacies-of-james-m-buchanan-and-neoliberalism/ | Debating the Legacies of James M. Buchanan and Neoliberalism | Craig Myers | 0 | NA |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/28/my-order-my-rules-china-and-the-american-rules-based-order-in-historical-perspective/ | ‘My Order, My Rules’: China and the American Rules-Based Order in Historical Perspective | William M. Zolinger Fujii | 0 | NA |
5.3 A for Loop
## [1] "https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-ukraine-as-a-russian-land/"for(i in 1:5){
text <- read_html(df[i,"url"]) %>%
html_nodes(".-inset article") %>%
html_text() %>%
str_replace_all("[\r\n]" , " ") %>%
str_remove("(.*)(Shutterstock|Loading views)") %>%
str_remove_all("[:graph:]{50,1000}") %>%
str_remove_all("[:space:]{2,}") %>%
str_remove_all("(Further Reading|References)(.*)")
df[i,"text_loop"]<-text
}| url | title | authors | opinion | text | text_loop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a-testing-ground-for-european-sovereignty/ | Opinion – The Libyan Border as a Testing Ground for European Sovereignty | Robert Palmer | 1 | Migrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter the EU out with regulated processes. The journey is dangerous, requiring a departure from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe’s shores. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become one of the main gateways for illegal migration to Europe. The EU aims to lock the North African nation down as a transit point by deploying a border assistance mission. Immediately, this tactic is a means of tackling problematic immigration beyond Europe’s borders. But it is also an opportunity – to be won or lost – that could play a crucial role in defining and asserting the bloc’s as-of-yet-undetermined stance on ‘sovereignty’.With so many migrants travelling through Libya, smuggling and trafficking networks there have erupted. Those on the ground claim the country has become a nexus of coercion, torture, and deprivation. The instability unleashed by the Libyan civil war has dragged roughly 650,000 migrants into dire conditions. Those living in the Libya-based migrant community are reportedly “vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions,” while migrants held in detention centres there “may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water.”Pressure on the EU is mounting. On the one hand, there are the practical considerations — a collection of nations struggling with the flow of people simply trying to escape horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, there is the challenge of dealing with the problem in a humane and distinctively European way: this last part, in fact, might create the greater trouble for lawmakers.A United Nations report states that, in all likelihood, the lack of human rights protection for migrants at sea,is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, the European Union Member States and institutions, and other actors.To its credit, the EU has made clear that it plans to improve the situation. While this move is a vital one, it is also a crucial moment for a nascent idea of European sovereignty. The situation unfolds in a dynamic context under the shadow of a crescent China and a waning, less-than dependable ally in the United States.European Commission action plan states that:The Commission intends to step up border management support at Libya’s Southern border, while in parallel strengthening cross-border cooperation between Libya and its bordering countries in the South, including Niger.Increasingly, voices in the EU call for either a greater level of integration than ever before, or a move in the opposite direction, towards disparate nationalism. Brexit, for its part, has demonstrated that even if presented as greener pastures, the going-it-alone strategy is a risky one at best.The German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, for his part has indicated an interest in pursuing a German vision of European sovereignty – but it is one that appears to diverge from equivalent notions in France. Though Emanuel Macron may lead the charge on a more militant, assertive vision of Europe, he faces a presidential election in April 2022. While France might hold the 6-month rotating stewardship of the EU, there are no guarantees that French centrist political ambitions will live to see it through.The necessity of a response to the encroachment of Russia on the eastern flank, adds a certain preparatory atmosphere. In this sense, the migrant conundrum offers a formative testing ground for defining and assessing practicalities around sovereignty. But, as with many such crises, the adequacy of the means employed must support the scale of ambitions. And indeed, many believe that it is only the bloc’s united size that will allow it to remain relevant and active on the global stage. “The choice is not between national and European sovereignty,” wrote Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former advisor to Macron, back in December 2019. “It is between European sovereignty and none at all.”For all of these reasons, the Libyan border situation is one that calls for caution. With European sovereignty far from set, any reliance on foreign contractors to bolster security could quickly become problematic. For instance, were the EU to assign projects to companies governed by foreign powers, this could inadvertently, both symbolically and strategically, cede sovereignty to foreign masters. Given the increasing sense of a free-for-all in the realm of private military contractors, confidence is in decline. That is why outsourcing to non-member states could get even more complicated.A European Parliament resolution warned that “no local PSC [private security company] should be employed or subcontracted in conflict regions” and that the EU should favour companies “genuinely based in Europe” and subjected to EU law. However, this resolution has limited scope and is non-binding, therefore its “impact in the theatre remains unclear”.The EU has already had some unfortunate episodes which highlighted the issue of handing out contracts to foreign companies, either local entities or non-European ones working abroad. One noteworthy example was the use of the Canadian firm GardaWorld and British firm G4S in places like Afghanistan. Even though Gardaworld was partnering with the French security company Amarante, Gardaworld always kept leadership in field operations. As a result, the companies’ complete inability to support and evacuate their security personnel during the Kabul Airlift even made headlines last year. The ambiguous role private companies are taking in modern conflicts underlines the need for the EU to work with companies bound by EU law.Following the 2015 migrant crisis, consensus on EU immigration policy took a bruising. And even now, any future definition remains in flux – much like the European project as a whole.Such considerations give an indication of the subtle forces at play in the skirmish for European sovereignty. It remains to be seen what course officials plot on the already incendiary Libyan border. | Migrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter the EU out with regulated processes. The journey is dangerous, requiring a departure from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe’s shores. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become one of the main gateways for illegal migration to Europe. The EU aims to lock the North African nation down as a transit point by deploying a border assistance mission. Immediately, this tactic is a means of tackling problematic immigration beyond Europe’s borders. But it is also an opportunity – to be won or lost – that could play a crucial role in defining and asserting the bloc’s as-of-yet-undetermined stance on ‘sovereignty’.With so many migrants travelling through Libya, smuggling and trafficking networks there have erupted. Those on the ground claim the country has become a nexus of coercion, torture, and deprivation. The instability unleashed by the Libyan civil war has dragged roughly 650,000 migrants into dire conditions. Those living in the Libya-based migrant community are reportedly “vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions,” while migrants held in detention centres there “may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water.”Pressure on the EU is mounting. On the one hand, there are the practical considerations — a collection of nations struggling with the flow of people simply trying to escape horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, there is the challenge of dealing with the problem in a humane and distinctively European way: this last part, in fact, might create the greater trouble for lawmakers.A United Nations report states that, in all likelihood, the lack of human rights protection for migrants at sea,is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, the European Union Member States and institutions, and other actors.To its credit, the EU has made clear that it plans to improve the situation. While this move is a vital one, it is also a crucial moment for a nascent idea of European sovereignty. The situation unfolds in a dynamic context under the shadow of a crescent China and a waning, less-than dependable ally in the United States.European Commission action plan states that:The Commission intends to step up border management support at Libya’s Southern border, while in parallel strengthening cross-border cooperation between Libya and its bordering countries in the South, including Niger.Increasingly, voices in the EU call for either a greater level of integration than ever before, or a move in the opposite direction, towards disparate nationalism. Brexit, for its part, has demonstrated that even if presented as greener pastures, the going-it-alone strategy is a risky one at best.The German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, for his part has indicated an interest in pursuing a German vision of European sovereignty – but it is one that appears to diverge from equivalent notions in France. Though Emanuel Macron may lead the charge on a more militant, assertive vision of Europe, he faces a presidential election in April 2022. While France might hold the 6-month rotating stewardship of the EU, there are no guarantees that French centrist political ambitions will live to see it through.The necessity of a response to the encroachment of Russia on the eastern flank, adds a certain preparatory atmosphere. In this sense, the migrant conundrum offers a formative testing ground for defining and assessing practicalities around sovereignty. But, as with many such crises, the adequacy of the means employed must support the scale of ambitions. And indeed, many believe that it is only the bloc’s united size that will allow it to remain relevant and active on the global stage. “The choice is not between national and European sovereignty,” wrote Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former advisor to Macron, back in December 2019. “It is between European sovereignty and none at all.”For all of these reasons, the Libyan border situation is one that calls for caution. With European sovereignty far from set, any reliance on foreign contractors to bolster security could quickly become problematic. For instance, were the EU to assign projects to companies governed by foreign powers, this could inadvertently, both symbolically and strategically, cede sovereignty to foreign masters. Given the increasing sense of a free-for-all in the realm of private military contractors, confidence is in decline. That is why outsourcing to non-member states could get even more complicated.A European Parliament resolution warned that “no local PSC [private security company] should be employed or subcontracted in conflict regions” and that the EU should favour companies “genuinely based in Europe” and subjected to EU law. However, this resolution has limited scope and is non-binding, therefore its “impact in the theatre remains unclear”.The EU has already had some unfortunate episodes which highlighted the issue of handing out contracts to foreign companies, either local entities or non-European ones working abroad. One noteworthy example was the use of the Canadian firm GardaWorld and British firm G4S in places like Afghanistan. Even though Gardaworld was partnering with the French security company Amarante, Gardaworld always kept leadership in field operations. As a result, the companies’ complete inability to support and evacuate their security personnel during the Kabul Airlift even made headlines last year. The ambiguous role private companies are taking in modern conflicts underlines the need for the EU to work with companies bound by EU law.Following the 2015 migrant crisis, consensus on EU immigration policy took a bruising. And even now, any future definition remains in flux – much like the European project as a whole.Such considerations give an indication of the subtle forces at play in the skirmish for European sovereignty. It remains to be seen what course officials plot on the already incendiary Libyan border. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-ukraine-as-a-russian-land/ | Opinion – Putin’s Obsession with Ukraine as a ‘Russian Land’ | Taras Kuzio | 1 | NA | Everybody is a ‘Ukraine expert’ these days, or are they? Practically none of the multitude of Western commentaries about the Russian threat to invade Ukraine have mentioned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine as a ‘Russian land’ that needs to be re-taken back from Washington’s control as the driving factor of the worst crisis in Europe since the 1960s.As I have explained in my book Crisis in Russian Studies?, Western scholars have either downplayed Russian nationalism in Putin’s Russia or not wanted to deal with the consequences. As I analyse in Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War published on 27 January, the USSR recognised a Ukrainian identity different (but close) to Russian; Soviet Ukraine even had a seat at the UN (the USSR had three seats). Russian nationalism under Putin has stagnated to that of the pre-Soviet era and White Russian emigres which denies the very existence of a Ukrainian state and Ukrainian people. Putin and other Russian officials repeatedly state Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people.’ Russian information warfare repeats this racism on a daily basis and denigrates Ukraine and Ukrainians in a manner commonly found among pre-1945 Western colonialists.As seen in Putin’s 6,000 word article published in July, at the heart of Putin’s demand is an utter disdain for Ukraine and an unwillingness to accept it is a sovereignand independent country.As the liberal British Observer newspaper wrote: ‘The Russian view that Ukraine is stolen territory to which it has a natural right has roots in tsarist times and before. Ukrainians (and Belarusians) were habitually called ‘little Russians’. Indigenous narratives stress a common history and common faith indissolubly linking two brotherly eastern Slavic races. Putin has repeatedly stated that ‘Russians and Ukrainians are one people’.The Observer continued: ‘Conveniently forgotten is 19th-century imperial oppression that included a ban on Ukraine’s language’ followed by‘a man-made ‘terror famine’ (Holodomor) that killed 4-5 million ‘and is now officially viewed as a Soviet genocide.’ Although this crisis is taking place in the early 21st century, Putin’s views of Ukraine as part of ‘Russia’ ‘recalls that of 1950s France towards Algeria and of 19th-century England towards Ireland.’ Indeed, I have explored the similarities between British and Russian chauvinism towards the Irish and Ukrainians respectively and that of Ulster and Donbas empire loyalists.Putin and the Kremlin believe Ukraine is ruled by a ‘fascist junta’ that came to power in the Euromaidan Revolution and transformed the country into a US puppet state. In their dystopian world, Russian leaders do not feel the need to explain how ‘fascist’ Ukraine can be led by a Jewish-Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Or explain how a ‘fascist’ regime is suppressing Russophones when a Russian-speaker (Zelenskyy) won a landslide in the 2019 Ukrainian elections?The Kremlin’s complete control of the media in Russia makes it difficult for most Russians to understand these contradictions in official disinformation. 68% of Russians blame the US and NATO and Ukraine for the escalation of the war this year and only 6% Russia and its two proxy entities in occupied Donbas. While Russian media push ‘civil war’ disinformation about the conflict in eastern Ukraine, approximately three quarters of Ukrainians believe their country is already at war with Russia. When we therefore discuss the question of ‘Will Russian invade?’ we need to remember that this already happened in 2014-2015 in Crimea and theRussian President and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s, now deputy head of the Russian Security Council, showed complete disdain for Ukraine’s independence in his October 2021 article. Medvedev echoed the Kremlin’s official line that Ukraine is a US puppet state, ruling out talking to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a waste of time and instead calling for talks with its alleged US puppet master. As Medvedev wrote, ‘it makes no sense for us to deal with the vassals. Business must be done with the overlord’.Because Ukraine is a ‘Russian land’ it has no right to decide its own future and should be, forcibly if need be, returned to the Russian World. The Russian World brings together Ukrainians (‘Little Russians’) and Belarusians (‘White Russians’) under Russian (‘Great Russian’) leadership. All three are now viewed by Putin – as in the Tsarist era – as the pan-Russian nation (obshcherusskiy narod).Contemporary pan-Russianism is as much a threat to European security as pan-Germanism was in the 1930s. The two are identical in demanding the unity of ‘Russian’ (or Russian speaking) and German speaking peoples. In the 1930s, the pan-Germanists were obsessed with Poland while today the pan-Russianists are obsessed with Ukraine.In December 2021, Putin presented Europe and the US with a demand for written security guarantees or Russia will resort to ‘military-technical means’. US-Russian, NATO-Russian and OSCE summits in the second week of January produced no positive breakthrough as the West would never have agreed to Putin’s ultimatums Putin has long sought a second agreement modelled on that signed by the great powers in Yalta in 1945 where the US would recognise Eurasia as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence and Ukraine as part of that sphere.Russia’s penchant for a second Yalta agreement akin to that in 1945 would never have taken place; while Putin has not the world has moved on. Russia’s leaders are nostalgic for the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the US negotiated how to run the world and divide it into spheres of influence. ‘The US has consistently expressed support for the principle that every country has the sovereign right to make its own decisions with respect to its security,’ a US official said. ‘That remains US policy today and will remain US policy in the future.’With the failure of diplomacy to reach a way out of an artificially manufactured crisis, Europe is faced, according to a leaked US intelligence report with the threat of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine in January-February. US intelligence was of good enough quality to have convinced doubters in the EU and NATO of the seriousness of the Russian threat to invade Ukraine when it was circulated to the November 2021 meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Riga. Western diplomats are being warned to be ready to quickly evacuate, presumably if some of Russian military attack takes place.Putin’s brinkmanship creates the biggest threat to European security since the 1961 Cuban missile crisis and should be understood in four ways. The first is the threat to Russia’s own political stability. Putin’s occupation of Crimea has remained popular among Russians over the seven years since the peninsula was invaded. An average of 84-86% of Russians, including some members of the opposition such as imprisoned Alexei Navalny, support Crimea’sis not true of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine which has no historical symbolismin Russian nationalism. Putin has therefore hidden Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine by describing what is taking place in the Donbas as a ‘civil war’. As the Levada Centre, Russia’s last independent sociological service, recently wrote: ‘To imagine that the Ukrainian army is at war with the Russian one is beyond the imagination of Russians.’ While 37% of Russians believe the conflict could transform into a Russian-Ukrainian war, 55% do not.A full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy Putin’s seven-year myth of a ‘civil war’ by showing Russia is at war with its neighbour. This ‘civil war’ myth has been used by Putin to hide the conflict from the Russian population while allowing Russia to have its cake and eat it by sitting at the negotiating table to find a peaceful outcome to a war the Kremlin is itself undertaking against Ukraine.British expert on Russian security Mark Galeotti believes that ‘A vicious war in Ukraine could shatter the unity and legitimation of the Russian regime.’ Russian sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya writes that an open Russian-Ukrainian war, ‘would be incredibly unpopular with the Russian people.’ A Russian occupation of Ukraine would be bloody and costly to Russian forces with the large number of body bags returning to Russia adding to the threats to the stability of Putin’ssecond threat is that an invasion would – like in 2014 – again show how Russian stereotypes of Ukraine have nothing in common with reality. Because Russian leaders believe Ukrainians are ‘Little Russians’ under ‘fascist’ and US control, an invading force would be welcomed with bread and salt as liberators. This is not true. About two thirds of Ukrainian troops fighting against Russian proxies in the Donbas are eastern Ukrainians and Russian speakers. The highest casualties of Ukrainian security forces are to be found in Dnipropetrovsk.Thirdly, an invading force needs to have a 3:1 ratio to succeed against well-dug in defending forces. With Ukraine’s 260,000-strong army, the third largest in Europe, would require upwards of two thirds of Russia’s entire army to subdue. Coupled with this number are one million reservists of whom 400,000 are battle hardened veterans of the Donbas war. Each of Ukraine’s 25 regions has a territorial defence force that would become partisans after an invasion. Russia could invade Ukraine and possibly defeat its army, but it would be impossible for Putin to achieve his end goal of transforming Ukraine into a copy of Alexander Lukashenka’s Belarus. A Russian occupation of Ukraine would require levels of pacification of the occupied population that would make repression in Belarus since last year’s elections look like a Sunday picnic.If Ukraine is invaded it would be inevitable that the US and some other NATOmembers would aim to transform it, in the words of US Senator Chris Murphy, into Russia’s ‘next Afghanistan’. The USCongress is sending ‘increased military systems’ and will ‘dramatically increase the amount of lethal aid [to Ukraine]’. NATO special forces have been training and learning from their Ukrainian counterparts since 2014. NATO provides support on countering cyber attacks of the type Ukraine was hit on the 13 January. The US is also to offer Ukraine intelligence on impending Russian military movements and attack plans.The roots of this artificial crisis lie in Putin’s pan-Russianist obsession that Ukraine is a ‘Russian land’ and Ukrainians are a branch of the pan-Russian nation. Everything else flows from that. If Ukraine is ‘Russian’ it has no right to decide a destiny separate to Russia’s. As long as Western scholars continue to dismiss or downplay nationalism in Russia, they will be unable to see the wood for the trees about the worst crisis in Russia’s relations with the West for the last six decades. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/14/opinion-kazakhstans-dark-heritage/ | Opinion – Kazakhstan’s Dark Heritage | Martin Duffy | 1 | NA | As Kazakstan’s President Tokayev faces an unprecedented challenge from popular protest or “foreign terrorists” or internal coup (or a combination of all three) it is worth reflecting on the dark heritage of this former Soviet state. That Tokayev’s interior ministry recently confirmed that 9,900 people had been detained in the aftermath of the violence, refreshes the memory of the days when Kazakstan was a key point in the Soviet Gulag Archipelago.Solzhenitsyn used the word archipelago as a metaphor for political camps, which were scattered like hellish islands extending from the “Bering Strait across the Bosporus.” The biggest of these notorious facilities, the Kazak corrective labor camp at Karlag, Karanganda, was the pride of the Kremlin’s Gulag system. Established in 1930 it became the home for thousands of convict laborers and political dissidents and by the time of closure in 1959 had tortured over a million prisoners. Karlag was among the largest Gulag camps. Prisoners were brought to Karlag in shackles by train, packed into boxcars like freight. Most had been charged as “enemies of the workers” under the arbitrary Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code.Controlled from Moscow by the fearsome NKVD (secret police) prisoners who committed certain crimes were placed in special punishment cells notorious for their use of extreme heat and cold. Particularly intractable prisoners were housed in water tanks, depriving them of sleep. At first religious leaders, writers, and then anyone accused of regime disloyalty was subjected to repression. NKVD also arrested the wives and children of the “enemies of the people.”There was a massive childhood morbidity at these camps between 1930–1940 creating what is now gruesomely called “the Mommy’s cemetry”. Many were locked up for decades only for reading foreign textbooks. The living conditions of women did not differ from men. The women had only one advantage – they were rarely shot, but alas they were frequently subjected to sexual abuse.Known Gulag prisoners included Lev Gumilyov (son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov); Rakhil Messerer-Plisetskaya (mother of famous ballerina Maya Plisetskaya); Alexandr Yesenin (son of Russian poet Sergei Yesenin); as well as the leading Kazakh public figures like Ahmet Baitursynov and Gazymbek Birimzhanov,Probably Karlag’s most famous inmate was the German writer Margarete Buber-Neumann. Author of Under Two Dictators (a memoir of Karlag) Margarete went on to survive a Nazi concentration camp. Her husband Heinz had been executed during Stalin’s Great Purge. She survived five years in Nazi Ravensbruck. Living in Sweden and later Germany, and encouraged by her friend Arthur Koestler, she wrote about her years in both Soviet prison and Nazi concentration camps, including her time in Kazakstan. Predictably it aroused the bitter hostility of the Soviet and German communists but ensured that the detail of these torture camps was internationally understood.On 23 February 1949, Buber-Neumann testified in support of Victor Kravchenko, author of the best-selling autobiography, Choose Freedom, following his defection from the Soviet Union. Kravchenko was suing agents of the French Communist Party for libel after it accused him of fabricating his account of Soviet labor camps. Buber-Neumann corroborated Kravchenko’s account, securing his victory.Buber-Neumann continued to write for the next three decades. The same year, she joined the anti-communist Congress for Cultural Freedom with Arthur Koestler and Bertrand Russell. Of Communism and Nazism, Buber-Neumann wrote: “Between the misdeeds of Hitler and those of Stalin there exists only a quantitative difference… I don’t know if the Communist idea, if its theory, already contained a basic fault or if only the Soviet practice under Stalin betrayed the original idea and established in the Soviet Union a kind of Fascism…” She died aged 88 on November 6, 1989, in Germany, just three days before the fall of the Berlin31 is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression in Kazakhstan, but it is a low-key affair. Kazakstan has experienced a careful political memorializing of the Soviet Gulags into national historic sites. Two Gulag museums, Alzhir (the Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), and Karlag (the former Karaganda Corrective Labour Camp) opened in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Historical experience of Soviet brutality is watered down to create a more acceptable history. The Gulag tragedies are ‘justified’ by the ideologies of the time, and selective in what they say. This reflects a genuine if partial societal amnesia of the past. Such convenient loss of memory is a response to the collective trauma experienced by the population of Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. It should not be forgotten that during the Kengir uprising in 1954, Karlag’s inmates pushed the Soviets out and held the complex for forty days.Nevertheless, in Kazakhstan today, a significant percentage of people have living family whose life trajectories included deportation and imprisonment in the camps. A monument in Almaty, Kazakhstan commemorates an anti-Soviet protest in 1986, but the government, partly because of its pro-Russian foreign policy, discourages remembrances of selected historical events. There are political aspects to a sidestepping of Kazakhstan’s recent history, too, often born out of the government’s determination to stay friendly with Russia. To sustain support for a pro-Russia foreign policy, Kazakhstan seemingly ignores its colonial and neo-colonial history with Russia. Although those efforts have not added up to a ban on public remembrance, the government is wary- censoring via the education system and state media such as KazakhFilm.Visitors to today’s Karlag Gulag Museum Complex will find an impressive modern building which does not immediately embody dark heritage. Inside there are 3 floors of exhibits, convict art, propaganda posters and dioramas showing what life was like within the gulag system. A basement houses a gruesome series of prison cells, torture rooms and execution equipment, overlooked by approving busts of Lenin. The museum was able to find prison records for January 1959, the year it closed, that show 16,957 prisoners incarcerated across Karlag, a noticeable drop from the high of 65,673 recorded in January 1949.The Karlag museum receives a score of 7 out of 10 on dark-tourism.com’s “darkometer” scale. By comparison, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima both score 10. Exhibits include the horrors of the famine that ravaged Kazakhstan between 1919 and 1922 killing 500,000 people. The famine, along with the violent crushing of anti-Soviet rebellions, are described as “the most terrible offenses against mankind” but no explanations are offered.The complex comprises a small but elegant museum, a memorial and a well-preserved Stolypin car, a basic railway carriage used for transporting prisoners. One of the first things the visitor sees upon entering is a quote by the former President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev: “the Gulag camp system was a crime against humanity!” However, this is not shouted too loudly, especially at times when the President might require Moscow’s help.The museum suggests Karlag’s purpose was to feed the prison system in Kazakhstan; in other words, it dealt in agriculture. Karlag was reorganized into the state farm Gigant and the camp, which held about 65,000 inmates at its peak, became the largest sovkhoz in the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan has done something that would be unthinkable in Russia. The past has been declared a national tragedy and the whole country has been turned into a huge memorial, but Russia manages to escape blame, as if decades of persecution had been committed by alien invaders.Former President Nazarbayev, now 81, shrewdly embellished commemoration of the Gulag with a strange system of ritualized interpretations, which unified each ethnic group in memory of the Gulag on the side of the victims, while the blame is placed on the faceless NKVD or “Stalinist system”.Modern Kazakhstan has a penchant for re-writing history, which means the events of recent weeks, alarm its leaders.Kazakhstan’s current president has said troops from a Russian-led military bloc will soon withdraw. Tokayev had asked for assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to regain control, after unrest that left at least 164 people dead. Amidst fears of a permanent Russian foothold in Kazakhstan, Tokayev insists the withdrawal would beginexecuted a ruthless crackdown after protests over rising fuel prices were allegedly exploited by violent groups, who attacked government buildings and briefly seized the airport in Almaty. He has described those involved as “terrorists” with shadowy foreign backers. Former President Nazarbayev has remained absent from public view since the protests began, and Tokayev removed him from his position as head of the national security council, as well as sacking his security boss. The extreme wealth accumulated by the Nazarbayev dynasty has contributed to the mood of protest, and fueled fears of regime infighting. Russian troops on Kazak soil are unpleasant reminders of Kazakhstan’s dark heritage and bring unwelcome memories of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” in this politically unstable part of Central Asia. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/13/legitimacy-and-nationalism-chinas-motivations-and-the-dangers-of-assumptions/ | Legitimacy and Nationalism: China’s Motivations and the Dangers of Assumptions | Lewis Eves | 0 | NA | There is increasing anxiety in the West about China’s growing assertiveness on the international stage. This anxiety is evident in the policies of western states. The USA has described China as ‘a sustained challenge’ to the international system (The White House, 2021 p.8). Meanwhile, the UK is investing in its ‘China-facing capabilities’ and Australia is purchasing nuclear submarines to hedge against China’s presence in the South China Sea (HM Government, 2021 p.22; Masterson, 2021). Undoubtedly, China’s rise poses a challenge to the status quo. If for no other reason than that it represents an alternative to the western-centric international system (Turin, 2010). Nevertheless, representing an alternative to the status quo does not mean that Chinese foreign policy is inherently motivated by challenging the West.Such anxious perspectives of Chinese foreign policy are rooted in realism, a theory of international relations which assumes actors to be inherently self-interested and motivated by the egoistic pursuit of power (Waltz 2001; Mearshimer 2003). According to this ontology, the potential power to be gained by acting assertively is enough to account for China’s foreign policy motivations. Social constructivism, on the other hand, posits that an actor’s motivations are rooted in the social interactions between groups within the state (Leira, 2019). Using this lens, China’s foreign policy motivations must be understood in relation to its domestic politics. Adopting a socially constructivist ontology, this article argues that Chinese foreign policy is motivated, at least in part, by domestic nationalist pressures and that, by way of the security paradox, western policies are fuelling Chinese assertiveness.This article proceeds as follows. Firstly, by presenting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) twin-pillar model of legitimacy and its increased reliance on nationalism to maintain its regime’s legitimacy. It then outlines China’s nationalist movement and its foreign policy agenda, using the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute to show how nationalist pressure affects the CCP’s foreign policy decision-making. Consideration is then given to the CCP’s social controls, showing that the CCP is unable to mitigate nationalist pressure via its propaganda infrastructure. The final section then presents the security paradox concept and how the West’s realist assumptions and anxious policies are fuelling Chinese assertiveness.Pillars of LegitimacyAfter Mao’s death, the CCP could no longer rely upon a cult of personality to provide popular support for its regime (Coble, 2007). Rather, the CCP has since premised its regime legitimacy ‘upon the twin pillars of nationalism and economic prosperity (Reilly, 2004 p.283). This model of legitimacy predicates the CCP’s regime security upon its ability to improve the economic conditions of the Chinese people and its ability to protect and pursue China’s nationalthe CCP has closely associated itself with China’s economic success and national interests. The CCP-owned People’s Daily, for example, regularly praises the CCP for fostering China’s ‘thriving and diverse economy’ (Cai, 2021). It goes as far as to praise specific CCP economic policies such as the 13th Five Year Plan, which is credited with growing China’s digital economy by 16.6% from 2016-20 (People’s Daily Online, 2021a). Also published were calls to support the CCP in protecting national interests from foreign intervention. For example, by purchasing Xinjiang Cotton against the backdrop of international condemnation of China’s treatment of Xinjiang’s Uighur population (People’s Daily Online, 2021b).Notably, Chinese president Xi Jinping invoked both pillars when speaking at the CCP’s 100th-anniversary celebrations. Stating that ‘only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China’ (BBC News, 2021) In this statement, the CCP and its specific brand of socialist ideology are presented as essential to China’s economic development. Meanwhile, Xi also made an overtly nationalistic pledge that the CCP will:never allow anyone to bully, oppress or subjugate China. Anyone who tries to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of Steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people (Xi via BBC News, 2021).Evidently, the CCP is eager to associate itself with economic development and protecting the Chinese nation. Doing so in accordance with the twin pillar model to maintain its regime legitimacy.However, an emerging issue with the twin pillar model is that the CCP increasingly struggles to ensure economic prosperity. Central to the economic pillar are Deng Xiaoping’s liberal economic reforms. Since their introduction in the early 1980s, per capita income has increased by 2500% and over 800 million Chinese have been saved from poverty, conferring popular support for the CCP’s economic stewardship (Denmark, 2018). Yet, structural economic challenges including a declining labour force, low per-capita productivity, and an over-reliance on manufacturing result in barriers to sustained growth (World Bank, n.d.). Consequentially, 373 million Chinese continue living in some degree of relative poverty (Ibid.).As economic prosperity becomes harder to guarantee, the integrity of the economic pillar is weakened. This is an issue of which the CCP is aware. China’s growth rate in 2018 was 6.6% (Kuo, 2019), significantly below both China’s highs of over 10% growth in the 2000s, and the necessary rate needed to maintain high levels of employment (World Bank, n.d.). This led to concerns among CCP officials that rising unemployment might lead to social unrest (Kuo, 2019). This included Premier Li Keqiang, who publicly acknowledged ‘public dissatisfaction’ over China’s stagnating economic performance (Bradsher and Buckley, 2019).Given the economic pillar’s weakness, the CCP must rely more upon the nationalist pillar to carry the burden of its regime legitimacy. Hence, the CCP has been less likely to constrain popular expressions of nationalist in recent years (Abbott, 2016). In 2005, tens-of-thousands of Chinese nationalists protested Japanese textbooks for their omission of atrocities committed against China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (Watts, 2005). Protesters attacked Japanese businesses and property, including Japan’s embassies and consulates (Yardley, 2005). Some local CCP branches and low-level officials encouraged the demonstrations, but the central CCP discouraged the nationalist demonstrations (Watts, 2005). These efforts included deploying riot police, shutting down public transport and the Minister of Public Security declaring the protests illegal and citing concern for Sino-Japanese relations as the reason for this crackdown (Yardley, 2005).In stark contrast, the CCP did relatively little to stop anti-Japanese protests in 2012. This time, nationalists in over 180 Chinese cities gathered in the tens-of-thousands to protest Japan’s nationalisation of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (Gries et al., 2016), an island chain in the East China Sea claimed by China but administered by Japan. Notably, senior CCP officials failed to comment on the protests while the dispute was ongoing (Buckley, 2012). Tensions in Sino-Japanese relations were higher in 2012 compared to 2005 (Gries et al., 2016), meaning it is challenging to isolate China’s economic performance as a variable accounting for the difference in the CCP’s response. However, it is notable that China’s economic growth rate slowed by roughly one-third from 11.39% in 2005 to 7.86% in 2012 (World Bank, n.d.). Accordingly, as per the twin-pillar model, the CCP’s reluctance to constrain the nationalistic anti-Japanese protests was to be expected, any anti-protest measures risking the nationalist credentials upon which the CCP increasingly relied as the economic pillarNationalism and the CCP’s Foreign PolicyThe CCP’s reliance on the nationalist pillar confers considerable influence upon China’s nationalist movement. This in turn requires the CCP to acquiesce to the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy to maintain its legitimating nationalist credentials. Chinese nationalism is not a unified movement but consists of groups and organisations sharing a common Chinese nationalism sensitive to what it considers affronts to the Chinese nation and vocal in its activism against said affronts (Reilly, 2004; Coble, 2007; Johnston, 2017). Some of these groups and organisations have formal links with the CCP, for example, the Communist Youth League and nationalists working in local CCP branches (Watts, 2005; Kecheng, 2020). Others operate more independently of the CCP, such as nationalists among the Chinese diaspora and most of China’s online activist groups (Modongal, 2016; Fang and Repnikova, 2018).These groups subscribe to a broad nationalist agenda and expect the CCP to use China’s growing economic and military strength to pursue China’s interests (Abbott, 2016). Specifically, they demand justice for historical repression, recognition of China commensurate with its newfound strength, that the CCP mobilise against threats to Chinese sovereignty, and that China’s sphere of influence be respected (Boylan et al., 2020). This agenda was evident in the recent US-China trade war. Nationalists called for sanctions in response to what they perceived as a US attempt to reject China’s status as a leading global economy, comparing US tariffs to the repressive economic restrictions imposed upon China by western imperialists in the 1800sthe nationalist agenda and the CCP’s reliance on the nationalist pillar for regime legitimacy is significant. This is because the CCP must adhere to the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy to live up to its nationalist credentials (Coble, 2007). This is apparent in how, against the backdrop of China’s slowing economy, nationalist pressure has coincided with a hard-line stance from the CCP in China’s foreign relations. An example of this can be found as early as the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute (also known as the Trawler Incident). This dispute began after a Chinese fishing trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard vessels in the territorial waters of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, after which Japan arrested the trawler’s crew. Initially the CCP responded relatively benignly, limited to Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu issuing a statement requesting that Japan ‘refrain from so-called law-enforcement activities in the East China Sea’ (Johnson 2010).However, nationalistic anti-Japanese protests began in the days following the incident. The protesters called upon the CCP to take further action against Japan. One protester outside the Japanese embassy explained: ‘I want our government to be stronger. They shouldn’t let the Japanese bully us on our own soil!’ (Lim, 2010). Meanwhile, a protester in Shanghai summarised the protests as follows: ‘We came here to appeal for fairness and for the right to ask for our captain back. We regret the government’s weakness in diplomacy’ (Al Jazeera, 2010a).Evidently, the China nationalist movement, in response to a perceived affront in the form of the trawler incident, sought to pressure the CCP into resolving the dispute in accordance with the nationalist agenda. The day after the protests started, and also only a day after their initial statement, Spokeswoman Jiang announced naval deployments to the East China Sea. This demarcated the first instance of regular Chinese patrols in the region since the normalisation of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1970s (Green et al., 2017). In the following weeks, as the nationalistic anti-Japanese protests continued, China also suspended diplomatic contacts with Japan and ceased rare earth exports essential to Japanese manufacturing (Hafeez, 2015). Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also threatened Japan with retaliation while in New York for a UN conference (Al Jazeera, 2010b).The fact that the CCP pivoted from a diplomatic response to naval deployments within one day, and that this pivot coincided with nationalist pressure upon the CCP, shows nationalism’s affect upon Chinese foreign policy in action. The rapid change in response to Japan resulting from the CCP wanting to uphold its nationalist credentials regardless of the implications for Sino-Japanese relations.Of course, it is plausible that the CCP simply desired to take a strong stance against Japan and that anti-Japanese sentiment merely offered the pretext for the CCP to flex its newfound military strength. Taffer (2020), for example, presents the trawler incident as an attempt by the CCP to test the USA’s commitment to its Japanese ally. However, the CCP made efforts to repair Sino-Japanese relations after the flashpoint of the dispute passed. These included the resumption of rare earth exports and mild discouragement of anti-Japanese protests once nationalist pressure subsided in the following months (Green et al., 2017). This indicates that the CCP did not want to damage Sino-Japanese relations, but rather that nationalist pressure forced the CCP to act in accordance with the nationalist agenda. Thereby safeguarding its nationalist credentials as per its increasing reliance upon the nationalist pillar to secure its regimeLimits of the CCP’s ControlReilly (2011) argues that the CCP practices effective social control over its nationalist movement by leveraging China’s propaganda infrastructure to direct and disperse nationalist sentiment as needed. If true, this would mean that the CCP faces no pressure to adhere to the nationalist agenda. It could merely adapt its propaganda messaging to counter nationalist pressure without appeasing the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy decision-making.Yet, the CCP has failed to restrict nationalist activism against foreign actors, illustrating the limits of the CCP’s control over China’s nationalist movement. For example, in 2020, against the backdrop of international condemnation of events in Hong Kong, the CCP struggled to crackdown on a nationalist anti-foreign smear campaign on social media (Lo, 2020). Notably, the Communist Youth League, a nationalistic youth movement affiliated with the CCP, provocatively endorsed a ‘social media crusade’ against foreign governments sympathetic towards Hong Kong (Kecheng, 2020). This shows that the CCP struggles to exert social control over nationalist organisations it has formal links with, let alone the broader Chinese nationalist movement.The limitations of the CCP’s crackdown on the nationalist social media campaign, and thus limitations of the CCP’s social controls over China’s nationalist movement, were most prominent in May 2020. Chinese nationalist hacktivists hijacked the Twitter account of the Chinese embassy in Paris, posting a picture depicting the USA as the personification of death, trailing blood along a corridor and knocking at Hong Kong’s door with the caption ‘who’s next?’ (Lo, 2020). This is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the response from the Chinese embassy was to rapidly delete the post and issued formal apologies to France and the USA (Keyser, 2020). These actions are inconsistent with a CCP truly motivated to assert China’s national interests to the detriment of its foreign relations, but consistent with a CCP struggling to control China’s nationalist movement.Secondly, and most importantly, this example shows Chinese nationalists to be hijacking the CCP’s propaganda infrastructure to pursue their foreign policy agenda. This points to a reality in which, rather than the CCP having social control of China’s nationalist movement through its propaganda infrastructure, Chinese nationalists find ways to escape the CCP’s social controls. It also shows that they are willing to respond independently of the CCP to perceived affronts to the Chinese nation if they feel the CCP fails to do so adequately.Given the limitations of the CCP’s social controls, the CCP cannot merely adapt its propaganda messaging to offset nationalist pressure. Rather, it must contend with the dilemma of either acquiescing to the nationalist agenda, even to the detriment of China’s foreign relations, or risking its nationalist credentials and thus regime legitimacy. This demonstrates that domestic nationalist pressures are a significant factor in China’s foreign policy decision-making despite the CCP’s propaganda infrastructure.Why Does it Matter?Understanding the nationalist pressures on the CCP’s foreign policy decision-making is important for two reasons. Firstly, from an academic standpoint, it serves as a case study in working past initial assumptions about an actor’s motivations. Whereas western policymakers anxiously assume China’s motivations in accordance with realism, this article has presented an alternative explanation. By looking at an actor’s foreign policy as a product of its domestic politics, it is possible to provide a more meaningful explanation of their foreign policy motivations. In this case, that China is motivated, at least in part, by the CCP’s desire to uphold its legitimating nationalist credentials in the face of pressure to adhere to the foreign policy agenda of its nationalistin terms of the practise of international relations, it shows how the realist assumptions of western policymakers and their respective China policies risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. This is in accordance with the security paradox concept. Also known as the security dilemma, the security paradox refers to a cycle in which two sides, through their efforts to mitigate their own uncertainty and insecurity, trigger uncertainty and insecurity in the other (Booth and Wheeler, 2007). As this cycle progresses tensions may escalate to the point that conflict emerges despite, paradoxically, neither side necessarily holding any ill-will towards the other at the start of the paradox (Ibid.). An example of a security paradox is the Anglo-German naval arms race during the prelude to World War I. In this, Germany’s maritime ambitions caused Britain to expand its navy, in turn lea ding Germany to accelerate its naval programme and thus Britain to develop larger battleships, and so on (Maurer, 1997).A similar mechanic can be observed today regarding the West and its policies towards China. Western states, anxious about China’s rise and growing assertiveness, are enacting policies in preparation of a Chinese challenge to the status quo. Purchasing nuclear submarines and investing in ‘China-facing capabilities’. While understandable given their anxiety and realist assumptions, these policies risk provoking Chinese nationalists. Thereby generating pressure on the CCP to enact the assertive foreign policy the West wants to avoid. Likely leading to further western policies that risk being interpreted as an affront by Chinese nationalists. If unchecked, this could lead to hostility despite both the West and the CCP merely attempting to mitigate their own insecurities.That western policies are provoking Chinese nationalists is clear to see. Minister Yang Xiaoguang of the Chinese embassy in London has explained that the Chinese people have expressed ‘antipathy and opposition’ to the UK’s plans to China policy (Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 2021). This indicates domestic nationalist pressure on the CCP to respond to the UK’s policy. Similarly, in response to American posturing and Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines, Chinese nationalists briefly began calls for the CCP to declare war on AUKUS (Davidson and Blair, 2021). These examples both highlight how, in response to western policy, China’s nationalist movement is pressuring the CCP to adhere to its foreign policy agenda. In doing so, making the case that the West is, by way of its China policies, creating the assertive China that fuels their own anxieties.ConclusionEvidently, China’s foreign policy motivations are influenced by domestic nationalist pressures and western policy. This is apparent considering the twin-pillar model. As economic prosperity has become harder for the CCP to guarantee, it has had to increasingly rely upon nationalism for legitimacy. This confers considerable influence upon China’s nationalist movement. China’s nationalist movement subscribes to a broad nationalist agenda, which it wants the CCP to adhere to in its foreign policy decision-making. This has affected China’s foreign policy in practise, apparent as early as 2010 when the CCP quickly pivoted to align more closely to the nationalist agenda during the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute. Some have argued that the CCP’s control over China propaganda infrastructure confers effective control over China’s nationalist movement. However, as discussed, the CCP’s social controls over Chinese nationalists are in fact limited. With nationalists even bypassing said propaganda infrastructure and directly pursuing their foreign policy agenda when they consider the CCP to failed to rectify affronts to the Chinesethe domestic pressures motivating Chinese foreign policy showcases the importance of moving beyond realist assumptions and highlights how we can achieve a fuller understanding by considering the domestic when we study the international. It also shows that western foreign policies are, by way of the security paradox, generating the assertive China that western policy was intended to mitigate. As the West provokes Chinese nationalists, they are pressuring the CCP to enact more assertive foreign policies, in turn causing further anxiety in the West. Further study into how China’s domestic politics informs its foreign policy could offer additional insights motivations. It could also inform western policies towards China. Lessening the risk of provoking Chinese nationalists and thus better mitigating western anxieties. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/business-and-human-rights-overcoming-old-paradigms-pushing-for-new-frontiers/ | Business and Human Rights: Overcoming Old Paradigms, Pushing for New Frontiers | Florian Wettstein | 0 | NA | In 2017, France enacted the much-anticipated Corporate Duty of Vigilance law, which requires large French companies to identify, address and report on human rights impacts across their operations and value chains, and provides an opportunity for those harmed by such impacts to seek remedy in French courts (Cossart, Chaplier & Beau de Lomenie 2017; Palombo 2019). Since then, a number of other countries have followed suit to enact their own version of such human rights due diligence (HRDD) legislation. Examples include the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Switzerland (Krajewski, Tonstad & Wohltmann 2021; Bueno & Kaufmann 2021). In addition, legislative initiatives toward this end are ongoing in various additional countries. Perhaps most significantly, the European Union announced such legislation in 2021, although recently postponed it to 2022.These new laws and initiatives are part of a larger trend toward improving accountability and addressing impunity of companies for the human rights impacts of their operations (Quijano & Lopez 2021). Corporate activities can have negative impacts on the human rights of people in myriad ways (Wettstein 2022). For example, child labor has been shown to be endemic in the cocoa supply chains of chocolate manufacturers (Jouvin 2021). Similarly, the seafood and garment industries have been plagued with exploitation, forced labor, and modern slavery (Armstrong 2020; Hoskins 2021). Extractive companies, which are responsible for more than a third of reported human rights violations (Ruggie 2013), frequently cause massive environmental destruction, pollute air, soil, and water and thus harm the rights of the members of local and indigenous communities who depend on agriculture and fishing grounds for their livelihoods. Private security personnel, hired to guard the premises of mining companies often have track records of excessive force and violence against protestors and potential intruders and of sexual exploitation and abuse of women in vulnerable positions (Knuckey and Jenkin 2015).Countless people all over the world, but particularly in the Global South, have suffered the consequences of corporate abuse. They have lost their livelihoods, their possessions, their land, and their health; and they have been harassed beaten, tortured, shot, and killed for standing up for their own human rights and those of others. However, the structure of multinational companies in particular has made it difficult and often impossible for victims of such corporate-related human rights abuse to seek justice and remedy. Particularly in countries with weak institutions and a lack of independent judicial systems, victims have been in weak positions to find redress for what they have endured. In addition, the principles of legal separation between parent companies and their subsidiaries and of limited liability have often prevented them from successfully suing the parent companies of rights-violating subsidiaries in their home states (Palombo 2019; Bernaz 2017; Zerk 2006).In response to such ‘governance gaps’ (Ruggie 2013; Simons and Macklin 2014), attempts to improve accountability systems both at the domestic and international levels have been intensified, particularly after the publication of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011. The UNGPs were the result of the six-year mandate of the UN special representative for business and human rights (SRSG), John Ruggie, who was appointed in 2005 with the goal to clarify the relation between human rights and business and the respective implications and responsibilities for both states and corporations that may derive from it (Ruggie 2013). John Ruggie’s appointment as the SRSG followed a failed attempt of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights to work toward a legally binding international framework for corporate human rights responsibility. The so-called UN Draft Norms failed to overcome the fierce resistance of the private sector and Western economic powers in 2003 (Weissbrodt and Kruger 2003).The issue of business and human rights more generally started to gain broader international attention some ten years earlier in the mid-1990s, when international oil companies, and among them particularly Shell, came under fire for their role connected to the killing of nine Ogoni activists – including the famous playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa – who were executed over their resistance and protest against the environmental destruction caused by multinational corporations in the Niger Delta (Wettstein 2020;then, and partly still today, the idea of corporations as bearers of human rights responsibility seemed counter-intuitive at best. For human rights scholars, the idea and concept of human rights has traditionally been tied closely to states (Muchlinski 2001). In their view, the very definition of human rights hinges on corresponding state obligations, which makes a focus on business and human rights a conceptual non-starter. For corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholars, on the other hand, corporate responsibility is to be thought as private, voluntary responsibility, which does not fit well with the binding and public character of human rights (Wettstein 2020). As a consequence, human rights have remained a relative blind spot in conventional CSR approaches in the past (Wettstein 2012).However, this traditional view on the incompatibility of business and human rights started to shift at a broad scale with the publication of the UNGPs. While not formulating any binding obligations for businesses, the UNGPs are clear in establishing a corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which is independent from governments’ human rights obligations and thought to apply wherever they operate. At the same time, the UNGPs reiterate governments’ primary, international law-based obligation to protect human rights against the abuse of third parties, including businesses.By establishing a corporate responsibility to respect human rights, the UNGPs have led to a shift in the discussion on BHR, from focusing on the basic justification of corporate human rights responsibility to questions of implementation and accountability at the corporate, domestic and international levels (Schrempf-Stirling & van Buren III 2020).Implementation challenges at the corporate levelAccording to the UNGPs, corporations ought to conduct HRDD in order to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. HRDD consists of identifying, responding to and communicating on actual and potential negative human rights impacts. While HRDD can be one effective means toward respecting human rights, the close alignment of HRDD with the responsibility to respect more generally has been criticized for a number of reasons.First, HRDD is at best an incomplete approximation of respecting human rights. It is merely one means by which respect can be achieved, likely in combination with other necessary measures. Thus, conducting HRDD in and of itself is no guarantee that human rights will not be violated. Therefore, equating respect of human rights with HRDD contains the danger that corporate human rights violations persist, but without anyone being responsible for it. The risk is that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights is deemed to be met not by actually having a zero-violation record, but merely by having conducted HRDD. This, in turn, undermines the right and possibility of the victims to seek remedy for the violation (Bonnitcha & McCorquodale 2017).Second, due diligence is a familiar tool to companies for the identification and appraisal of risk. It is applied particularly in the area of mergers and acquisition, but has become relevant also with regard to environmental and even social risks in recent years (Martin-Ortega 2014; Götzmann 2017). However, HRDD poses new and different challenges to companies. Most importantly, while HRDD is also designed as a risk-based process, its understanding of human rights risk deviates from risk appraisals of more ‘conventional’ enterprise risk management systems. Specifically, while ‘regular’ risk-based due diligence focuses on the materiality of risks for the company, HRDD is all about assessing and mitigating risks for rightsholders (Fasterling 2017). The UNGPs are clear in pointing out that HRDD requires a switch of perspective from a corporate-centric to a rightsholder-centered interpretation of risk. Hence, HRDD requires more than simply integrating a human rights focus into existing due diligence or risk-management processes. A study assessing different approaches to HRDD yielded clear results in this regard: companies with a dedicated HRDD process that addressed human rights directly and explicitly identified adverse impacts in about 80 percent of their assessments, while companies that merely considered human rights implicitly through existing risk management processes only identified adverse impacts 20 percent of the time. (McCorquodale, Smit, Neely & Brookschallenges at the domestic levelThe UNGPs ask governments to make use of the full range of their possibilities to protect human rights in the business realm and to implement a smart mix of measures – national and international, soft and hard – to do so. Governments have generally responded reluctantly to this requirement. However, significant advances have been made in recent years in various jurisdictions, not least owed to the forceful campaigning around BHR issues by civil society organizations.At the policy level, some two dozen governments have issued so-called National Action Plans on BHR (NAPs) and many more are in the process of doing so. While such NAPs have been criticized for being vague and non-committal (Methven O’Brien, Mehra, Blackwell & Poulsen-Hansen 2016), they do outline a basic commitment of governments to BHR and designate it as a policy priority.However, perhaps more significant is the evolving trend in the legislative arena. As outlined earlier, a growing number of predominantly Western European states have enacted or are developing designated BHR legislation. While there is significant variance of such laws between jurisdictions, they tend to render HRDD mandatory for companies at various levels. As such, they tend to transform HRDD from a voluntary commitment into a binding obligation for businesses.This growing trend of a ‘hardening’ of the UNGPs in the domestic realm (Choudhury 2017; Scrhrempf-Stirling & Wettstein 2021) does not only show in the legislative, but also in the adjudicative space. BHR litigation is not a new phenomenon in principle. Litigators have brought civil lawsuits for human rights violations against multinational companies to the domestic courts of parent companies’ home states since the 1990s (Meeran 2021). However, while most of such cases were dismissed on the grounds of lacking jurisdiction of home state courts in the past, there have been significant advances in this regard in recent years. In a number of jurisdictions such as the UK, the Netherlands and Canada, courts have accepted jurisdiction for a few seminal cases and outlined promising paths for future cases to follow suit (Roorda & Leader 2021). It is to be expected that the above-described trend toward new BHR legislation will create further possibilities for victims of corporate human rights abuse to bring cases to the courts of multinationals’ home states.Accountability challenges at the international levelThe lack of binding force of the UNGPs for corporations has been lamented by critics all along (Nolan 2013; Deva & Bilchitz 2013). As a consequence, 10 years after John Ruggie put the UN Draft Norms to rest for good – a move that was later termed ‘Normicide’ – the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution at the initiative of Ecuador and South Africa to commence new negotiations on a binding international treaty on BHR in 2015 (Deva & Bilchitz 2017). While Western powers and the private sector keep opposing such binding instruments at the international level, countries of the Global South along with civil society organizations are supporting it. However, history is only partly repeating itself in this regard. The BHR landscape has changed profoundly in the past ten years; the UNGPs have fostered broad acceptance of a corporate responsibility to respect human rights and it is now for the opponents of such a view to provide plausible reasons why such a responsibility should not be binding. Nevertheless, the negotiations so far have made it clear that despite this changed context, the road to a binding instrument will be long and hard-fought. However, we have seen what perhaps few of us thought possible: five years into the negotiations, there still is aMerging business and human rights requires that we overcome two old paradigms. First, we must give up on the state-centrism that has characterized traditional human rights thinking and systematically include non-state actors, and among them businesses, as bearers of human rights obligations. Second, we must replace the corporate-centric, private outlook that has characterized CSR with an understanding of corporations as political institutions with public responsibilities that include respect for human rights. In a nutshell, we must move from the state-centric outlook on human rights and the corporate-centric view on corporate responsibility, to a rightsholder-centered understanding of business and human rights.Those old paradigms in our thinking on human rights and corporate responsibility have both obstructed our view on corporate human rights responsibility conceptually and also enabled the creation of structures that have made it difficult to put business and human rights into practice. Recently, the UNGPs have opened the door to breaking down some of those long-standing barriers to corporate human rights accountability and recent developments particularly in domestic legislative and judicative spaces give reason for hope that this door can be pushed open wider. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the success of the business and human rights movement is measured by tangible improvements of the situation of those whose rights are abused on the ground – and by this measure, the business and human rights journey has only just started.BibliographyArmstrong, Chris. 2020. Fishing industry must do more to tackle human rights abuses – here’s where to start. The Conversation, November 23, 2020.Bernaz, Nadia. 2017. Business and Human Rights. History, law and policy – Bridging the accountability gap. London; New York: Routledge.Bilchitz, David. 2013. A chasm between ‘is’ and ‘ought’? A critique of the normative foundations of the SRSG’s Framework and the Guiding Principles. In: Deva, Surya & Bilchitz, David (eds.), Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? 107-137. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Bonnitcha, Jonathan & McCorquodale, Robert. 2017. The Concept of ‘Due Diligence’ in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The European Journal of International Law 28/3: 899-919.Bueno, Nicolas & Kaufmann, Christine. 2021. The Swiss Human Rights Due Diligence Legislation: Between Law and Politics. Business and Human Rights Journal 6/3: 542 – 549.Choudhury, Barnali. 2017. Hardening soft law initiatives in business and human rights. In: du Plessis, Jean J. & Low, Chee K. (eds.), Corporate governance codes for the 21st century, 189-208. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.Cossart, Sandra, Chaplier, Jérôme & Beau de Lomenie, Tiphaine. 2017. The French Law on Duty of Care: A Historic Step Towards Making Globalization Work for All. Business and Human Rights Journal 2/2: 317-323.Deva, Surya & Bilchitz, David (eds.), Building a Treaty on Business and Human Rights: Context and Contours. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Fasterling, Björn. 2017. Human Rights Due Diligence as Risk Management: Social Risk Versus Human Rights Risk. Business and Human Rights Journal 2/2: 225-247.Götzmann, Nora. 2017. Human Rights Impact Assessment of Business Activities: Key Criteria for Establishing Meaningful Practice. Business and Human Rights Journal 2/1: 87-108.Hoskins, Tansy. 2021. ‘They left us starving’: How the fashion industry abandoned its workers. openDemocracy, January 18, 2021.Jouvin, Marine. 2021. Measuring child labour on Ivorian cocoa farms certified child-labour-free : the way you ask matters. The Conversation, October 3, 2021.Knuckey, Sarah & Jenkin, Eleanor. 2015. Company-created remedy mechanisms for serious human rights abuses: a promising new frontier for the right to remedy? The International Journal of Human Rights, 19/6: 801-827.Krajewski, Markus, Tonstad, Kristel & Wohltmann, Franziska. 2021. Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence in Germany and Norway: Stepping, or Striding, in the Same Direction? Business and Human Rights Journal 6/3: 550 – 558Martin-Ortega, Olga. 2014. Human Rights Due Diligence for Corporations: From Voluntary Standards to Hard Law at Last. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 31/4: 44-74.McCorquodale, Robert, Smit, Lise, Neely, Stuart & Brooks, Robin. 2017. Human Rights Due Diligence in Law and Practice: Good Practices and Challenges for Business Enterprises. Business and Human Rights Journal 2/2: 195-224.Meeran, Richard. 2021. Multinational Human Rights Litigation in the UK: A Retrospective. Business and Human Rights Journal 6/2: 255-269.Methven O’Brien, Claire, Mehra, Amol, Blackwell, Sara & Poulsen-Hansen, Cathrine Bloch. 2016. National Action Plans: Current Status and Future Prospects for a New Business and Human Rights Governance Tool. Business and Human Rights Journal 1/1:Peter. 2001. Human Rights And Multinationals: Is There A Problem? International Affairs 77/1: 31-47.Nolan, Justine. 2013. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights: soft law or not law? In: Deva, Surya & Bilchitz, David (eds.), Human Rights Obligations of Business: Beyond the Corporate Responsibility to Respect? 138-161. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Palombo, Dalia. 2019a. The Duty of Care of the Parent Company: A Comparison between French Law, UK Precedents and the Swiss Proposals. Business and Human Rights Journal 4/2: 265-286.Quijano, Gabriela & Lopez, Carlos. 2021. Rise of Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence: A Beacon of Hope or a Double-Edged Sword? Business and Human Rights Journal 6/2: 241-254.Roorda, Lucas & Leader, Daniel. 2021. Okpabi v Shell and Four Nigerian Farmers v Shell: parent company liability back in court. Business and Human Rights Journal 6/2: 368-376.Ruggie, John G. 2013. Just Business: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights, New York, London: W. W. Norton & Co.Schrempf-Stirling, Judith, & Van Buren III, Harry J. 2020. Business and Human Rights Scholarship in Social Issues in Management: An Analytical Review. Business and Human Rights Journal, 5/1: 28-55.Schrempf-Stirling, Judith & Wettstein, Florian. 2021. Public and Private Governance in Business and Human Rights: A Dynamic Model of Mutual Influences. Academy of Management Proceedings.Simons, Penelope & Macklin, Audrey. 2014. The Governance Gap. Extractive industries, human rights, and the home state advantage. London; New York: Routledge.Weissbrodt, David & Muria Kruger. 2003. Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights. American Journal of Intemational Law 97: 901-22.Wettstein, Florian. 2012a. CSR and the Debate on Business and Human Rights: Bridging the Great Divide. Business Ethics Quarterly 22/4: 739-770.Wettstein, Florian. 2020. The History of ‘Business and Human Rights’ and its Relationship with ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. In: Deva, Surya & Birchall, David (eds.), Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Wettstein, Florian. 2022. Business and Human Rights: Ethical, Legal, and Managerial Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Zerk, Jennifer A. 2006. Multinationals and Corporate Social Responsibility. Limitations and Opportunities in International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
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5.4 Functions
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## 5| url | title | authors | opinion | text |
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| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/19/opinion-the-libyan-border-as-a-testing-ground-for-european-sovereignty/ | Opinion – The Libyan Border as a Testing Ground for European Sovereignty | Robert Palmer | 1 | Migrants and asylum seekers use the Central Mediterranean route to enter the EU out with regulated processes. The journey is dangerous, requiring a departure from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe’s shores. Since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has become one of the main gateways for illegal migration to Europe. The EU aims to lock the North African nation down as a transit point by deploying a border assistance mission. Immediately, this tactic is a means of tackling problematic immigration beyond Europe’s borders. But it is also an opportunity – to be won or lost – that could play a crucial role in defining and asserting the bloc’s as-of-yet-undetermined stance on ‘sovereignty’.With so many migrants travelling through Libya, smuggling and trafficking networks there have erupted. Those on the ground claim the country has become a nexus of coercion, torture, and deprivation. The instability unleashed by the Libyan civil war has dragged roughly 650,000 migrants into dire conditions. Those living in the Libya-based migrant community are reportedly “vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions,” while migrants held in detention centres there “may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water.”Pressure on the EU is mounting. On the one hand, there are the practical considerations — a collection of nations struggling with the flow of people simply trying to escape horrifying circumstances. On the other hand, there is the challenge of dealing with the problem in a humane and distinctively European way: this last part, in fact, might create the greater trouble for lawmakers.A United Nations report states that, in all likelihood, the lack of human rights protection for migrants at sea,is not a tragic anomaly, but rather a consequence of concrete policy decisions and practices by the Libyan authorities, the European Union Member States and institutions, and other actors.To its credit, the EU has made clear that it plans to improve the situation. While this move is a vital one, it is also a crucial moment for a nascent idea of European sovereignty. The situation unfolds in a dynamic context under the shadow of a crescent China and a waning, less-than dependable ally in the United States.European Commission action plan states that:The Commission intends to step up border management support at Libya’s Southern border, while in parallel strengthening cross-border cooperation between Libya and its bordering countries in the South, including Niger.Increasingly, voices in the EU call for either a greater level of integration than ever before, or a move in the opposite direction, towards disparate nationalism. Brexit, for its part, has demonstrated that even if presented as greener pastures, the going-it-alone strategy is a risky one at best.The German chancellor, Olaf Scholtz, for his part has indicated an interest in pursuing a German vision of European sovereignty – but it is one that appears to diverge from equivalent notions in France. Though Emanuel Macron may lead the charge on a more militant, assertive vision of Europe, he faces a presidential election in April 2022. While France might hold the 6-month rotating stewardship of the EU, there are no guarantees that French centrist political ambitions will live to see it through.The necessity of a response to the encroachment of Russia on the eastern flank, adds a certain preparatory atmosphere. In this sense, the migrant conundrum offers a formative testing ground for defining and assessing practicalities around sovereignty. But, as with many such crises, the adequacy of the means employed must support the scale of ambitions. And indeed, many believe that it is only the bloc’s united size that will allow it to remain relevant and active on the global stage. “The choice is not between national and European sovereignty,” wrote Jean Pisani-Ferry, a former advisor to Macron, back in December 2019. “It is between European sovereignty and none at all.”For all of these reasons, the Libyan border situation is one that calls for caution. With European sovereignty far from set, any reliance on foreign contractors to bolster security could quickly become problematic. For instance, were the EU to assign projects to companies governed by foreign powers, this could inadvertently, both symbolically and strategically, cede sovereignty to foreign masters. Given the increasing sense of a free-for-all in the realm of private military contractors, confidence is in decline. That is why outsourcing to non-member states could get even more complicated.A European Parliament resolution warned that “no local PSC [private security company] should be employed or subcontracted in conflict regions” and that the EU should favour companies “genuinely based in Europe” and subjected to EU law. However, this resolution has limited scope and is non-binding, therefore its “impact in the theatre remains unclear”.The EU has already had some unfortunate episodes which highlighted the issue of handing out contracts to foreign companies, either local entities or non-European ones working abroad. One noteworthy example was the use of the Canadian firm GardaWorld and British firm G4S in places like Afghanistan. Even though Gardaworld was partnering with the French security company Amarante, Gardaworld always kept leadership in field operations. As a result, the companies’ complete inability to support and evacuate their security personnel during the Kabul Airlift even made headlines last year. The ambiguous role private companies are taking in modern conflicts underlines the need for the EU to work with companies bound by EU law.Following the 2015 migrant crisis, consensus on EU immigration policy took a bruising. And even now, any future definition remains in flux – much like the European project as a whole.Such considerations give an indication of the subtle forces at play in the skirmish for European sovereignty. It remains to be seen what course officials plot on the already incendiary Libyan border. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/17/opinion-putins-obsession-with-ukraine-as-a-russian-land/ | Opinion – Putin’s Obsession with Ukraine as a ‘Russian Land’ | Taras Kuzio | 1 | Everybody is a ‘Ukraine expert’ these days, or are they? Practically none of the multitude of Western commentaries about the Russian threat to invade Ukraine have mentioned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine as a ‘Russian land’ that needs to be re-taken back from Washington’s control as the driving factor of the worst crisis in Europe since the 1960s.As I have explained in my book Crisis in Russian Studies?, Western scholars have either downplayed Russian nationalism in Putin’s Russia or not wanted to deal with the consequences. As I analyse in Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War published on 27 January, the USSR recognised a Ukrainian identity different (but close) to Russian; Soviet Ukraine even had a seat at the UN (the USSR had three seats). Russian nationalism under Putin has stagnated to that of the pre-Soviet era and White Russian emigres which denies the very existence of a Ukrainian state and Ukrainian people. Putin and other Russian officials repeatedly state Russians and Ukrainians are ‘one people.’ Russian information warfare repeats this racism on a daily basis and denigrates Ukraine and Ukrainians in a manner commonly found among pre-1945 Western colonialists.As seen in Putin’s 6,000 word article published in July, at the heart of Putin’s demand is an utter disdain for Ukraine and an unwillingness to accept it is a sovereignand independent country.As the liberal British Observer newspaper wrote: ‘The Russian view that Ukraine is stolen territory to which it has a natural right has roots in tsarist times and before. Ukrainians (and Belarusians) were habitually called ‘little Russians’. Indigenous narratives stress a common history and common faith indissolubly linking two brotherly eastern Slavic races. Putin has repeatedly stated that ‘Russians and Ukrainians are one people’.The Observer continued: ‘Conveniently forgotten is 19th-century imperial oppression that included a ban on Ukraine’s language’ followed by‘a man-made ‘terror famine’ (Holodomor) that killed 4-5 million ‘and is now officially viewed as a Soviet genocide.’ Although this crisis is taking place in the early 21st century, Putin’s views of Ukraine as part of ‘Russia’ ‘recalls that of 1950s France towards Algeria and of 19th-century England towards Ireland.’ Indeed, I have explored the similarities between British and Russian chauvinism towards the Irish and Ukrainians respectively and that of Ulster and Donbas empire loyalists.Putin and the Kremlin believe Ukraine is ruled by a ‘fascist junta’ that came to power in the Euromaidan Revolution and transformed the country into a US puppet state. In their dystopian world, Russian leaders do not feel the need to explain how ‘fascist’ Ukraine can be led by a Jewish-Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Or explain how a ‘fascist’ regime is suppressing Russophones when a Russian-speaker (Zelenskyy) won a landslide in the 2019 Ukrainian elections?The Kremlin’s complete control of the media in Russia makes it difficult for most Russians to understand these contradictions in official disinformation. 68% of Russians blame the US and NATO and Ukraine for the escalation of the war this year and only 6% Russia and its two proxy entities in occupied Donbas. While Russian media push ‘civil war’ disinformation about the conflict in eastern Ukraine, approximately three quarters of Ukrainians believe their country is already at war with Russia. When we therefore discuss the question of ‘Will Russian invade?’ we need to remember that this already happened in 2014-2015 in Crimea and theRussian President and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev’s, now deputy head of the Russian Security Council, showed complete disdain for Ukraine’s independence in his October 2021 article. Medvedev echoed the Kremlin’s official line that Ukraine is a US puppet state, ruling out talking to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a waste of time and instead calling for talks with its alleged US puppet master. As Medvedev wrote, ‘it makes no sense for us to deal with the vassals. Business must be done with the overlord’.Because Ukraine is a ‘Russian land’ it has no right to decide its own future and should be, forcibly if need be, returned to the Russian World. The Russian World brings together Ukrainians (‘Little Russians’) and Belarusians (‘White Russians’) under Russian (‘Great Russian’) leadership. All three are now viewed by Putin – as in the Tsarist era – as the pan-Russian nation (obshcherusskiy narod).Contemporary pan-Russianism is as much a threat to European security as pan-Germanism was in the 1930s. The two are identical in demanding the unity of ‘Russian’ (or Russian speaking) and German speaking peoples. In the 1930s, the pan-Germanists were obsessed with Poland while today the pan-Russianists are obsessed with Ukraine.In December 2021, Putin presented Europe and the US with a demand for written security guarantees or Russia will resort to ‘military-technical means’. US-Russian, NATO-Russian and OSCE summits in the second week of January produced no positive breakthrough as the West would never have agreed to Putin’s ultimatums Putin has long sought a second agreement modelled on that signed by the great powers in Yalta in 1945 where the US would recognise Eurasia as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence and Ukraine as part of that sphere.Russia’s penchant for a second Yalta agreement akin to that in 1945 would never have taken place; while Putin has not the world has moved on. Russia’s leaders are nostalgic for the Cold War when the Soviet Union and the US negotiated how to run the world and divide it into spheres of influence. ‘The US has consistently expressed support for the principle that every country has the sovereign right to make its own decisions with respect to its security,’ a US official said. ‘That remains US policy today and will remain US policy in the future.’With the failure of diplomacy to reach a way out of an artificially manufactured crisis, Europe is faced, according to a leaked US intelligence report with the threat of a Russian military invasion of Ukraine in January-February. US intelligence was of good enough quality to have convinced doubters in the EU and NATO of the seriousness of the Russian threat to invade Ukraine when it was circulated to the November 2021 meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Riga. Western diplomats are being warned to be ready to quickly evacuate, presumably if some of Russian military attack takes place.Putin’s brinkmanship creates the biggest threat to European security since the 1961 Cuban missile crisis and should be understood in four ways. The first is the threat to Russia’s own political stability. Putin’s occupation of Crimea has remained popular among Russians over the seven years since the peninsula was invaded. An average of 84-86% of Russians, including some members of the opposition such as imprisoned Alexei Navalny, support Crimea’sis not true of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine which has no historical symbolismin Russian nationalism. Putin has therefore hidden Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine by describing what is taking place in the Donbas as a ‘civil war’. As the Levada Centre, Russia’s last independent sociological service, recently wrote: ‘To imagine that the Ukrainian army is at war with the Russian one is beyond the imagination of Russians.’ While 37% of Russians believe the conflict could transform into a Russian-Ukrainian war, 55% do not.A full-scale invasion of Ukraine would destroy Putin’s seven-year myth of a ‘civil war’ by showing Russia is at war with its neighbour. This ‘civil war’ myth has been used by Putin to hide the conflict from the Russian population while allowing Russia to have its cake and eat it by sitting at the negotiating table to find a peaceful outcome to a war the Kremlin is itself undertaking against Ukraine.British expert on Russian security Mark Galeotti believes that ‘A vicious war in Ukraine could shatter the unity and legitimation of the Russian regime.’ Russian sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya writes that an open Russian-Ukrainian war, ‘would be incredibly unpopular with the Russian people.’ A Russian occupation of Ukraine would be bloody and costly to Russian forces with the large number of body bags returning to Russia adding to the threats to the stability of Putin’ssecond threat is that an invasion would – like in 2014 – again show how Russian stereotypes of Ukraine have nothing in common with reality. Because Russian leaders believe Ukrainians are ‘Little Russians’ under ‘fascist’ and US control, an invading force would be welcomed with bread and salt as liberators. This is not true. About two thirds of Ukrainian troops fighting against Russian proxies in the Donbas are eastern Ukrainians and Russian speakers. The highest casualties of Ukrainian security forces are to be found in Dnipropetrovsk.Thirdly, an invading force needs to have a 3:1 ratio to succeed against well-dug in defending forces. With Ukraine’s 260,000-strong army, the third largest in Europe, would require upwards of two thirds of Russia’s entire army to subdue. Coupled with this number are one million reservists of whom 400,000 are battle hardened veterans of the Donbas war. Each of Ukraine’s 25 regions has a territorial defence force that would become partisans after an invasion. Russia could invade Ukraine and possibly defeat its army, but it would be impossible for Putin to achieve his end goal of transforming Ukraine into a copy of Alexander Lukashenka’s Belarus. A Russian occupation of Ukraine would require levels of pacification of the occupied population that would make repression in Belarus since last year’s elections look like a Sunday picnic.If Ukraine is invaded it would be inevitable that the US and some other NATOmembers would aim to transform it, in the words of US Senator Chris Murphy, into Russia’s ‘next Afghanistan’. The USCongress is sending ‘increased military systems’ and will ‘dramatically increase the amount of lethal aid [to Ukraine]’. NATO special forces have been training and learning from their Ukrainian counterparts since 2014. NATO provides support on countering cyber attacks of the type Ukraine was hit on the 13 January. The US is also to offer Ukraine intelligence on impending Russian military movements and attack plans.The roots of this artificial crisis lie in Putin’s pan-Russianist obsession that Ukraine is a ‘Russian land’ and Ukrainians are a branch of the pan-Russian nation. Everything else flows from that. If Ukraine is ‘Russian’ it has no right to decide a destiny separate to Russia’s. As long as Western scholars continue to dismiss or downplay nationalism in Russia, they will be unable to see the wood for the trees about the worst crisis in Russia’s relations with the West for the last six decades. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/14/opinion-kazakhstans-dark-heritage/ | Opinion – Kazakhstan’s Dark Heritage | Martin Duffy | 1 | As Kazakstan’s President Tokayev faces an unprecedented challenge from popular protest or “foreign terrorists” or internal coup (or a combination of all three) it is worth reflecting on the dark heritage of this former Soviet state. That Tokayev’s interior ministry recently confirmed that 9,900 people had been detained in the aftermath of the violence, refreshes the memory of the days when Kazakstan was a key point in the Soviet Gulag Archipelago.Solzhenitsyn used the word archipelago as a metaphor for political camps, which were scattered like hellish islands extending from the “Bering Strait across the Bosporus.” The biggest of these notorious facilities, the Kazak corrective labor camp at Karlag, Karanganda, was the pride of the Kremlin’s Gulag system. Established in 1930 it became the home for thousands of convict laborers and political dissidents and by the time of closure in 1959 had tortured over a million prisoners. Karlag was among the largest Gulag camps. Prisoners were brought to Karlag in shackles by train, packed into boxcars like freight. Most had been charged as “enemies of the workers” under the arbitrary Article 58 of the Soviet Penal Code.Controlled from Moscow by the fearsome NKVD (secret police) prisoners who committed certain crimes were placed in special punishment cells notorious for their use of extreme heat and cold. Particularly intractable prisoners were housed in water tanks, depriving them of sleep. At first religious leaders, writers, and then anyone accused of regime disloyalty was subjected to repression. NKVD also arrested the wives and children of the “enemies of the people.”There was a massive childhood morbidity at these camps between 1930–1940 creating what is now gruesomely called “the Mommy’s cemetry”. Many were locked up for decades only for reading foreign textbooks. The living conditions of women did not differ from men. The women had only one advantage – they were rarely shot, but alas they were frequently subjected to sexual abuse.Known Gulag prisoners included Lev Gumilyov (son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov); Rakhil Messerer-Plisetskaya (mother of famous ballerina Maya Plisetskaya); Alexandr Yesenin (son of Russian poet Sergei Yesenin); as well as the leading Kazakh public figures like Ahmet Baitursynov and Gazymbek Birimzhanov,Probably Karlag’s most famous inmate was the German writer Margarete Buber-Neumann. Author of Under Two Dictators (a memoir of Karlag) Margarete went on to survive a Nazi concentration camp. Her husband Heinz had been executed during Stalin’s Great Purge. She survived five years in Nazi Ravensbruck. Living in Sweden and later Germany, and encouraged by her friend Arthur Koestler, she wrote about her years in both Soviet prison and Nazi concentration camps, including her time in Kazakstan. Predictably it aroused the bitter hostility of the Soviet and German communists but ensured that the detail of these torture camps was internationally understood.On 23 February 1949, Buber-Neumann testified in support of Victor Kravchenko, author of the best-selling autobiography, Choose Freedom, following his defection from the Soviet Union. Kravchenko was suing agents of the French Communist Party for libel after it accused him of fabricating his account of Soviet labor camps. Buber-Neumann corroborated Kravchenko’s account, securing his victory.Buber-Neumann continued to write for the next three decades. The same year, she joined the anti-communist Congress for Cultural Freedom with Arthur Koestler and Bertrand Russell. Of Communism and Nazism, Buber-Neumann wrote: “Between the misdeeds of Hitler and those of Stalin there exists only a quantitative difference… I don’t know if the Communist idea, if its theory, already contained a basic fault or if only the Soviet practice under Stalin betrayed the original idea and established in the Soviet Union a kind of Fascism…” She died aged 88 on November 6, 1989, in Germany, just three days before the fall of the Berlin31 is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression in Kazakhstan, but it is a low-key affair. Kazakstan has experienced a careful political memorializing of the Soviet Gulags into national historic sites. Two Gulag museums, Alzhir (the Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), and Karlag (the former Karaganda Corrective Labour Camp) opened in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Historical experience of Soviet brutality is watered down to create a more acceptable history. The Gulag tragedies are ‘justified’ by the ideologies of the time, and selective in what they say. This reflects a genuine if partial societal amnesia of the past. Such convenient loss of memory is a response to the collective trauma experienced by the population of Kazakhstan during the Soviet era. It should not be forgotten that during the Kengir uprising in 1954, Karlag’s inmates pushed the Soviets out and held the complex for forty days.Nevertheless, in Kazakhstan today, a significant percentage of people have living family whose life trajectories included deportation and imprisonment in the camps. A monument in Almaty, Kazakhstan commemorates an anti-Soviet protest in 1986, but the government, partly because of its pro-Russian foreign policy, discourages remembrances of selected historical events. There are political aspects to a sidestepping of Kazakhstan’s recent history, too, often born out of the government’s determination to stay friendly with Russia. To sustain support for a pro-Russia foreign policy, Kazakhstan seemingly ignores its colonial and neo-colonial history with Russia. Although those efforts have not added up to a ban on public remembrance, the government is wary- censoring via the education system and state media such as KazakhFilm.Visitors to today’s Karlag Gulag Museum Complex will find an impressive modern building which does not immediately embody dark heritage. Inside there are 3 floors of exhibits, convict art, propaganda posters and dioramas showing what life was like within the gulag system. A basement houses a gruesome series of prison cells, torture rooms and execution equipment, overlooked by approving busts of Lenin. The museum was able to find prison records for January 1959, the year it closed, that show 16,957 prisoners incarcerated across Karlag, a noticeable drop from the high of 65,673 recorded in January 1949.The Karlag museum receives a score of 7 out of 10 on dark-tourism.com’s “darkometer” scale. By comparison, Auschwitz, and Hiroshima both score 10. Exhibits include the horrors of the famine that ravaged Kazakhstan between 1919 and 1922 killing 500,000 people. The famine, along with the violent crushing of anti-Soviet rebellions, are described as “the most terrible offenses against mankind” but no explanations are offered.The complex comprises a small but elegant museum, a memorial and a well-preserved Stolypin car, a basic railway carriage used for transporting prisoners. One of the first things the visitor sees upon entering is a quote by the former President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev: “the Gulag camp system was a crime against humanity!” However, this is not shouted too loudly, especially at times when the President might require Moscow’s help.The museum suggests Karlag’s purpose was to feed the prison system in Kazakhstan; in other words, it dealt in agriculture. Karlag was reorganized into the state farm Gigant and the camp, which held about 65,000 inmates at its peak, became the largest sovkhoz in the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan has done something that would be unthinkable in Russia. The past has been declared a national tragedy and the whole country has been turned into a huge memorial, but Russia manages to escape blame, as if decades of persecution had been committed by alien invaders.Former President Nazarbayev, now 81, shrewdly embellished commemoration of the Gulag with a strange system of ritualized interpretations, which unified each ethnic group in memory of the Gulag on the side of the victims, while the blame is placed on the faceless NKVD or “Stalinist system”.Modern Kazakhstan has a penchant for re-writing history, which means the events of recent weeks, alarm its leaders.Kazakhstan’s current president has said troops from a Russian-led military bloc will soon withdraw. Tokayev had asked for assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to regain control, after unrest that left at least 164 people dead. Amidst fears of a permanent Russian foothold in Kazakhstan, Tokayev insists the withdrawal would beginexecuted a ruthless crackdown after protests over rising fuel prices were allegedly exploited by violent groups, who attacked government buildings and briefly seized the airport in Almaty. He has described those involved as “terrorists” with shadowy foreign backers. Former President Nazarbayev has remained absent from public view since the protests began, and Tokayev removed him from his position as head of the national security council, as well as sacking his security boss. The extreme wealth accumulated by the Nazarbayev dynasty has contributed to the mood of protest, and fueled fears of regime infighting. Russian troops on Kazak soil are unpleasant reminders of Kazakhstan’s dark heritage and bring unwelcome memories of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” in this politically unstable part of Central Asia. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/13/legitimacy-and-nationalism-chinas-motivations-and-the-dangers-of-assumptions/ | Legitimacy and Nationalism: China’s Motivations and the Dangers of Assumptions | Lewis Eves | 0 | There is increasing anxiety in the West about China’s growing assertiveness on the international stage. This anxiety is evident in the policies of western states. The USA has described China as ‘a sustained challenge’ to the international system (The White House, 2021 p.8). Meanwhile, the UK is investing in its ‘China-facing capabilities’ and Australia is purchasing nuclear submarines to hedge against China’s presence in the South China Sea (HM Government, 2021 p.22; Masterson, 2021). Undoubtedly, China’s rise poses a challenge to the status quo. If for no other reason than that it represents an alternative to the western-centric international system (Turin, 2010). Nevertheless, representing an alternative to the status quo does not mean that Chinese foreign policy is inherently motivated by challenging the West.Such anxious perspectives of Chinese foreign policy are rooted in realism, a theory of international relations which assumes actors to be inherently self-interested and motivated by the egoistic pursuit of power (Waltz 2001; Mearshimer 2003). According to this ontology, the potential power to be gained by acting assertively is enough to account for China’s foreign policy motivations. Social constructivism, on the other hand, posits that an actor’s motivations are rooted in the social interactions between groups within the state (Leira, 2019). Using this lens, China’s foreign policy motivations must be understood in relation to its domestic politics. Adopting a socially constructivist ontology, this article argues that Chinese foreign policy is motivated, at least in part, by domestic nationalist pressures and that, by way of the security paradox, western policies are fuelling Chinese assertiveness.This article proceeds as follows. Firstly, by presenting the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) twin-pillar model of legitimacy and its increased reliance on nationalism to maintain its regime’s legitimacy. It then outlines China’s nationalist movement and its foreign policy agenda, using the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute to show how nationalist pressure affects the CCP’s foreign policy decision-making. Consideration is then given to the CCP’s social controls, showing that the CCP is unable to mitigate nationalist pressure via its propaganda infrastructure. The final section then presents the security paradox concept and how the West’s realist assumptions and anxious policies are fuelling Chinese assertiveness.Pillars of LegitimacyAfter Mao’s death, the CCP could no longer rely upon a cult of personality to provide popular support for its regime (Coble, 2007). Rather, the CCP has since premised its regime legitimacy ‘upon the twin pillars of nationalism and economic prosperity (Reilly, 2004 p.283). This model of legitimacy predicates the CCP’s regime security upon its ability to improve the economic conditions of the Chinese people and its ability to protect and pursue China’s nationalthe CCP has closely associated itself with China’s economic success and national interests. The CCP-owned People’s Daily, for example, regularly praises the CCP for fostering China’s ‘thriving and diverse economy’ (Cai, 2021). It goes as far as to praise specific CCP economic policies such as the 13th Five Year Plan, which is credited with growing China’s digital economy by 16.6% from 2016-20 (People’s Daily Online, 2021a). Also published were calls to support the CCP in protecting national interests from foreign intervention. For example, by purchasing Xinjiang Cotton against the backdrop of international condemnation of China’s treatment of Xinjiang’s Uighur population (People’s Daily Online, 2021b).Notably, Chinese president Xi Jinping invoked both pillars when speaking at the CCP’s 100th-anniversary celebrations. Stating that ‘only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China’ (BBC News, 2021) In this statement, the CCP and its specific brand of socialist ideology are presented as essential to China’s economic development. Meanwhile, Xi also made an overtly nationalistic pledge that the CCP will:never allow anyone to bully, oppress or subjugate China. Anyone who tries to do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of Steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people (Xi via BBC News, 2021).Evidently, the CCP is eager to associate itself with economic development and protecting the Chinese nation. Doing so in accordance with the twin pillar model to maintain its regime legitimacy.However, an emerging issue with the twin pillar model is that the CCP increasingly struggles to ensure economic prosperity. Central to the economic pillar are Deng Xiaoping’s liberal economic reforms. Since their introduction in the early 1980s, per capita income has increased by 2500% and over 800 million Chinese have been saved from poverty, conferring popular support for the CCP’s economic stewardship (Denmark, 2018). Yet, structural economic challenges including a declining labour force, low per-capita productivity, and an over-reliance on manufacturing result in barriers to sustained growth (World Bank, n.d.). Consequentially, 373 million Chinese continue living in some degree of relative poverty (Ibid.).As economic prosperity becomes harder to guarantee, the integrity of the economic pillar is weakened. This is an issue of which the CCP is aware. China’s growth rate in 2018 was 6.6% (Kuo, 2019), significantly below both China’s highs of over 10% growth in the 2000s, and the necessary rate needed to maintain high levels of employment (World Bank, n.d.). This led to concerns among CCP officials that rising unemployment might lead to social unrest (Kuo, 2019). This included Premier Li Keqiang, who publicly acknowledged ‘public dissatisfaction’ over China’s stagnating economic performance (Bradsher and Buckley, 2019).Given the economic pillar’s weakness, the CCP must rely more upon the nationalist pillar to carry the burden of its regime legitimacy. Hence, the CCP has been less likely to constrain popular expressions of nationalist in recent years (Abbott, 2016). In 2005, tens-of-thousands of Chinese nationalists protested Japanese textbooks for their omission of atrocities committed against China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (Watts, 2005). Protesters attacked Japanese businesses and property, including Japan’s embassies and consulates (Yardley, 2005). Some local CCP branches and low-level officials encouraged the demonstrations, but the central CCP discouraged the nationalist demonstrations (Watts, 2005). These efforts included deploying riot police, shutting down public transport and the Minister of Public Security declaring the protests illegal and citing concern for Sino-Japanese relations as the reason for this crackdown (Yardley, 2005).In stark contrast, the CCP did relatively little to stop anti-Japanese protests in 2012. This time, nationalists in over 180 Chinese cities gathered in the tens-of-thousands to protest Japan’s nationalisation of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (Gries et al., 2016), an island chain in the East China Sea claimed by China but administered by Japan. Notably, senior CCP officials failed to comment on the protests while the dispute was ongoing (Buckley, 2012). Tensions in Sino-Japanese relations were higher in 2012 compared to 2005 (Gries et al., 2016), meaning it is challenging to isolate China’s economic performance as a variable accounting for the difference in the CCP’s response. However, it is notable that China’s economic growth rate slowed by roughly one-third from 11.39% in 2005 to 7.86% in 2012 (World Bank, n.d.). Accordingly, as per the twin-pillar model, the CCP’s reluctance to constrain the nationalistic anti-Japanese protests was to be expected, any anti-protest measures risking the nationalist credentials upon which the CCP increasingly relied as the economic pillarNationalism and the CCP’s Foreign PolicyThe CCP’s reliance on the nationalist pillar confers considerable influence upon China’s nationalist movement. This in turn requires the CCP to acquiesce to the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy to maintain its legitimating nationalist credentials. Chinese nationalism is not a unified movement but consists of groups and organisations sharing a common Chinese nationalism sensitive to what it considers affronts to the Chinese nation and vocal in its activism against said affronts (Reilly, 2004; Coble, 2007; Johnston, 2017). Some of these groups and organisations have formal links with the CCP, for example, the Communist Youth League and nationalists working in local CCP branches (Watts, 2005; Kecheng, 2020). Others operate more independently of the CCP, such as nationalists among the Chinese diaspora and most of China’s online activist groups (Modongal, 2016; Fang and Repnikova, 2018).These groups subscribe to a broad nationalist agenda and expect the CCP to use China’s growing economic and military strength to pursue China’s interests (Abbott, 2016). Specifically, they demand justice for historical repression, recognition of China commensurate with its newfound strength, that the CCP mobilise against threats to Chinese sovereignty, and that China’s sphere of influence be respected (Boylan et al., 2020). This agenda was evident in the recent US-China trade war. Nationalists called for sanctions in response to what they perceived as a US attempt to reject China’s status as a leading global economy, comparing US tariffs to the repressive economic restrictions imposed upon China by western imperialists in the 1800sthe nationalist agenda and the CCP’s reliance on the nationalist pillar for regime legitimacy is significant. This is because the CCP must adhere to the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy to live up to its nationalist credentials (Coble, 2007). This is apparent in how, against the backdrop of China’s slowing economy, nationalist pressure has coincided with a hard-line stance from the CCP in China’s foreign relations. An example of this can be found as early as the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute (also known as the Trawler Incident). This dispute began after a Chinese fishing trawler collided with two Japanese coastguard vessels in the territorial waters of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, after which Japan arrested the trawler’s crew. Initially the CCP responded relatively benignly, limited to Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Jiang Yu issuing a statement requesting that Japan ‘refrain from so-called law-enforcement activities in the East China Sea’ (Johnson 2010).However, nationalistic anti-Japanese protests began in the days following the incident. The protesters called upon the CCP to take further action against Japan. One protester outside the Japanese embassy explained: ‘I want our government to be stronger. They shouldn’t let the Japanese bully us on our own soil!’ (Lim, 2010). Meanwhile, a protester in Shanghai summarised the protests as follows: ‘We came here to appeal for fairness and for the right to ask for our captain back. We regret the government’s weakness in diplomacy’ (Al Jazeera, 2010a).Evidently, the China nationalist movement, in response to a perceived affront in the form of the trawler incident, sought to pressure the CCP into resolving the dispute in accordance with the nationalist agenda. The day after the protests started, and also only a day after their initial statement, Spokeswoman Jiang announced naval deployments to the East China Sea. This demarcated the first instance of regular Chinese patrols in the region since the normalisation of Sino-Japanese relations in the 1970s (Green et al., 2017). In the following weeks, as the nationalistic anti-Japanese protests continued, China also suspended diplomatic contacts with Japan and ceased rare earth exports essential to Japanese manufacturing (Hafeez, 2015). Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also threatened Japan with retaliation while in New York for a UN conference (Al Jazeera, 2010b).The fact that the CCP pivoted from a diplomatic response to naval deployments within one day, and that this pivot coincided with nationalist pressure upon the CCP, shows nationalism’s affect upon Chinese foreign policy in action. The rapid change in response to Japan resulting from the CCP wanting to uphold its nationalist credentials regardless of the implications for Sino-Japanese relations.Of course, it is plausible that the CCP simply desired to take a strong stance against Japan and that anti-Japanese sentiment merely offered the pretext for the CCP to flex its newfound military strength. Taffer (2020), for example, presents the trawler incident as an attempt by the CCP to test the USA’s commitment to its Japanese ally. However, the CCP made efforts to repair Sino-Japanese relations after the flashpoint of the dispute passed. These included the resumption of rare earth exports and mild discouragement of anti-Japanese protests once nationalist pressure subsided in the following months (Green et al., 2017). This indicates that the CCP did not want to damage Sino-Japanese relations, but rather that nationalist pressure forced the CCP to act in accordance with the nationalist agenda. Thereby safeguarding its nationalist credentials as per its increasing reliance upon the nationalist pillar to secure its regimeLimits of the CCP’s ControlReilly (2011) argues that the CCP practices effective social control over its nationalist movement by leveraging China’s propaganda infrastructure to direct and disperse nationalist sentiment as needed. If true, this would mean that the CCP faces no pressure to adhere to the nationalist agenda. It could merely adapt its propaganda messaging to counter nationalist pressure without appeasing the nationalist agenda in its foreign policy decision-making.Yet, the CCP has failed to restrict nationalist activism against foreign actors, illustrating the limits of the CCP’s control over China’s nationalist movement. For example, in 2020, against the backdrop of international condemnation of events in Hong Kong, the CCP struggled to crackdown on a nationalist anti-foreign smear campaign on social media (Lo, 2020). Notably, the Communist Youth League, a nationalistic youth movement affiliated with the CCP, provocatively endorsed a ‘social media crusade’ against foreign governments sympathetic towards Hong Kong (Kecheng, 2020). This shows that the CCP struggles to exert social control over nationalist organisations it has formal links with, let alone the broader Chinese nationalist movement.The limitations of the CCP’s crackdown on the nationalist social media campaign, and thus limitations of the CCP’s social controls over China’s nationalist movement, were most prominent in May 2020. Chinese nationalist hacktivists hijacked the Twitter account of the Chinese embassy in Paris, posting a picture depicting the USA as the personification of death, trailing blood along a corridor and knocking at Hong Kong’s door with the caption ‘who’s next?’ (Lo, 2020). This is significant for two reasons. Firstly, the response from the Chinese embassy was to rapidly delete the post and issued formal apologies to France and the USA (Keyser, 2020). These actions are inconsistent with a CCP truly motivated to assert China’s national interests to the detriment of its foreign relations, but consistent with a CCP struggling to control China’s nationalist movement.Secondly, and most importantly, this example shows Chinese nationalists to be hijacking the CCP’s propaganda infrastructure to pursue their foreign policy agenda. This points to a reality in which, rather than the CCP having social control of China’s nationalist movement through its propaganda infrastructure, Chinese nationalists find ways to escape the CCP’s social controls. It also shows that they are willing to respond independently of the CCP to perceived affronts to the Chinese nation if they feel the CCP fails to do so adequately.Given the limitations of the CCP’s social controls, the CCP cannot merely adapt its propaganda messaging to offset nationalist pressure. Rather, it must contend with the dilemma of either acquiescing to the nationalist agenda, even to the detriment of China’s foreign relations, or risking its nationalist credentials and thus regime legitimacy. This demonstrates that domestic nationalist pressures are a significant factor in China’s foreign policy decision-making despite the CCP’s propaganda infrastructure.Why Does it Matter?Understanding the nationalist pressures on the CCP’s foreign policy decision-making is important for two reasons. Firstly, from an academic standpoint, it serves as a case study in working past initial assumptions about an actor’s motivations. Whereas western policymakers anxiously assume China’s motivations in accordance with realism, this article has presented an alternative explanation. By looking at an actor’s foreign policy as a product of its domestic politics, it is possible to provide a more meaningful explanation of their foreign policy motivations. In this case, that China is motivated, at least in part, by the CCP’s desire to uphold its legitimating nationalist credentials in the face of pressure to adhere to the foreign policy agenda of its nationalistin terms of the practise of international relations, it shows how the realist assumptions of western policymakers and their respective China policies risk becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. This is in accordance with the security paradox concept. Also known as the security dilemma, the security paradox refers to a cycle in which two sides, through their efforts to mitigate their own uncertainty and insecurity, trigger uncertainty and insecurity in the other (Booth and Wheeler, 2007). As this cycle progresses tensions may escalate to the point that conflict emerges despite, paradoxically, neither side necessarily holding any ill-will towards the other at the start of the paradox (Ibid.). An example of a security paradox is the Anglo-German naval arms race during the prelude to World War I. In this, Germany’s maritime ambitions caused Britain to expand its navy, in turn lea ding Germany to accelerate its naval programme and thus Britain to develop larger battleships, and so on (Maurer, 1997).A similar mechanic can be observed today regarding the West and its policies towards China. Western states, anxious about China’s rise and growing assertiveness, are enacting policies in preparation of a Chinese challenge to the status quo. Purchasing nuclear submarines and investing in ‘China-facing capabilities’. While understandable given their anxiety and realist assumptions, these policies risk provoking Chinese nationalists. Thereby generating pressure on the CCP to enact the assertive foreign policy the West wants to avoid. Likely leading to further western policies that risk being interpreted as an affront by Chinese nationalists. If unchecked, this could lead to hostility despite both the West and the CCP merely attempting to mitigate their own insecurities.That western policies are provoking Chinese nationalists is clear to see. Minister Yang Xiaoguang of the Chinese embassy in London has explained that the Chinese people have expressed ‘antipathy and opposition’ to the UK’s plans to China policy (Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 2021). This indicates domestic nationalist pressure on the CCP to respond to the UK’s policy. Similarly, in response to American posturing and Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines, Chinese nationalists briefly began calls for the CCP to declare war on AUKUS (Davidson and Blair, 2021). These examples both highlight how, in response to western policy, China’s nationalist movement is pressuring the CCP to adhere to its foreign policy agenda. In doing so, making the case that the West is, by way of its China policies, creating the assertive China that fuels their own anxieties.ConclusionEvidently, China’s foreign policy motivations are influenced by domestic nationalist pressures and western policy. This is apparent considering the twin-pillar model. As economic prosperity has become harder for the CCP to guarantee, it has had to increasingly rely upon nationalism for legitimacy. This confers considerable influence upon China’s nationalist movement. China’s nationalist movement subscribes to a broad nationalist agenda, which it wants the CCP to adhere to in its foreign policy decision-making. This has affected China’s foreign policy in practise, apparent as early as 2010 when the CCP quickly pivoted to align more closely to the nationalist agenda during the 2010 Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute. Some have argued that the CCP’s control over China propaganda infrastructure confers effective control over China’s nationalist movement. However, as discussed, the CCP’s social controls over Chinese nationalists are in fact limited. With nationalists even bypassing said propaganda infrastructure and directly pursuing their foreign policy agenda when they consider the CCP to failed to rectify affronts to the Chinesethe domestic pressures motivating Chinese foreign policy showcases the importance of moving beyond realist assumptions and highlights how we can achieve a fuller understanding by considering the domestic when we study the international. It also shows that western foreign policies are, by way of the security paradox, generating the assertive China that western policy was intended to mitigate. As the West provokes Chinese nationalists, they are pressuring the CCP to enact more assertive foreign policies, in turn causing further anxiety in the West. Further study into how China’s domestic politics informs its foreign policy could offer additional insights motivations. It could also inform western policies towards China. Lessening the risk of provoking Chinese nationalists and thus better mitigating western anxieties. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/business-and-human-rights-overcoming-old-paradigms-pushing-for-new-frontiers/ | Business and Human Rights: Overcoming Old Paradigms, Pushing for New Frontiers | Florian Wettstein | 0 | In 2017, France enacted the much-anticipated Corporate Duty of Vigilance law, which requires large French companies to identify, address and report on human rights impacts across their operations and value chains, and provides an opportunity for those harmed by such impacts to seek remedy in French courts (Cossart, Chaplier & Beau de Lomenie 2017; Palombo 2019). Since then, a number of other countries have followed suit to enact their own version of such human rights due diligence (HRDD) legislation. Examples include the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Switzerland (Krajewski, Tonstad & Wohltmann 2021; Bueno & Kaufmann 2021). In addition, legislative initiatives toward this end are ongoing in various additional countries. Perhaps most significantly, the European Union announced such legislation in 2021, although recently postponed it to 2022.These new laws and initiatives are part of a larger trend toward improving accountability and addressing impunity of companies for the human rights impacts of their operations (Quijano & Lopez 2021). Corporate activities can have negative impacts on the human rights of people in myriad ways (Wettstein 2022). For example, child labor has been shown to be endemic in the cocoa supply chains of chocolate manufacturers (Jouvin 2021). Similarly, the seafood and garment industries have been plagued with exploitation, forced labor, and modern slavery (Armstrong 2020; Hoskins 2021). Extractive companies, which are responsible for more than a third of reported human rights violations (Ruggie 2013), frequently cause massive environmental destruction, pollute air, soil, and water and thus harm the rights of the members of local and indigenous communities who depend on agriculture and fishing grounds for their livelihoods. Private security personnel, hired to guard the premises of mining companies often have track records of excessive force and violence against protestors and potential intruders and of sexual exploitation and abuse of women in vulnerable positions (Knuckey and Jenkin 2015).Countless people all over the world, but particularly in the Global South, have suffered the consequences of corporate abuse. They have lost their livelihoods, their possessions, their land, and their health; and they have been harassed beaten, tortured, shot, and killed for standing up for their own human rights and those of others. However, the structure of multinational companies in particular has made it difficult and often impossible for victims of such corporate-related human rights abuse to seek justice and remedy. Particularly in countries with weak institutions and a lack of independent judicial systems, victims have been in weak positions to find redress for what they have endured. In addition, the principles of legal separation between parent companies and their subsidiaries and of limited liability have often prevented them from successfully suing the parent companies of rights-violating subsidiaries in their home states (Palombo 2019; Bernaz 2017; Zerk 2006).In response to such ‘governance gaps’ (Ruggie 2013; Simons and Macklin 2014), attempts to improve accountability systems both at the domestic and international levels have been intensified, particularly after the publication of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011. The UNGPs were the result of the six-year mandate of the UN special representative for business and human rights (SRSG), John Ruggie, who was appointed in 2005 with the goal to clarify the relation between human rights and business and the respective implications and responsibilities for both states and corporations that may derive from it (Ruggie 2013). John Ruggie’s appointment as the SRSG followed a failed attempt of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights to work toward a legally binding international framework for corporate human rights responsibility. The so-called UN Draft Norms failed to overcome the fierce resistance of the private sector and Western economic powers in 2003 (Weissbrodt and Kruger 2003).The issue of business and human rights more generally started to gain broader international attention some ten years earlier in the mid-1990s, when international oil companies, and among them particularly Shell, came under fire for their role connected to the killing of nine Ogoni activists – including the famous playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa – who were executed over their resistance and protest against the environmental destruction caused by multinational corporations in the Niger Delta (Wettstein 2020;then, and partly still today, the idea of corporations as bearers of human rights responsibility seemed counter-intuitive at best. For human rights scholars, the idea and concept of human rights has traditionally been tied closely to states (Muchlinski 2001). In their view, the very definition of human rights hinges on corresponding state obligations, which makes a focus on business and human rights a conceptual non-starter. For corporate social responsibility (CSR) scholars, on the other hand, corporate responsibility is to be thought as private, voluntary responsibility, which does not fit well with the binding and public character of human rights (Wettstein 2020). As a consequence, human rights have remained a relative blind spot in conventional CSR approaches in the past (Wettstein 2012).However, this traditional view on the incompatibility of business and human rights started to shift at a broad scale with the publication of the UNGPs. While not formulating any binding obligations for businesses, the UNGPs are clear in establishing a corporate responsibility to respect human rights, which is independent from governments’ human rights obligations and thought to apply wherever they operate. At the same time, the UNGPs reiterate governments’ primary, international law-based obligation to protect human rights against the abuse of third parties, including businesses.By establishing a corporate responsibility to respect human rights, the UNGPs have led to a shift in the discussion on BHR, from focusing on the basic justification of corporate human rights responsibility to questions of implementation and accountability at the corporate, domestic and international levels (Schrempf-Stirling & van Buren III 2020).Implementation challenges at the corporate levelAccording to the UNGPs, corporations ought to conduct HRDD in order to meet their responsibility to respect human rights. HRDD consists of identifying, responding to and communicating on actual and potential negative human rights impacts. While HRDD can be one effective means toward respecting human rights, the close alignment of HRDD with the responsibility to respect more generally has been criticized for a number of reasons.First, HRDD is at best an incomplete approximation of respecting human rights. It is merely one means by which respect can be achieved, likely in combination with other necessary measures. Thus, conducting HRDD in and of itself is no guarantee that human rights will not be violated. Therefore, equating respect of human rights with HRDD contains the danger that corporate human rights violations persist, but without anyone being responsible for it. The risk is that the corporate responsibility to respect human rights is deemed to be met not by actually having a zero-violation record, but merely by having conducted HRDD. This, in turn, undermines the right and possibility of the victims to seek remedy for the violation (Bonnitcha & McCorquodale 2017).Second, due diligence is a familiar tool to companies for the identification and appraisal of risk. It is applied particularly in the area of mergers and acquisition, but has become relevant also with regard to environmental and even social risks in recent years (Martin-Ortega 2014; Götzmann 2017). However, HRDD poses new and different challenges to companies. Most importantly, while HRDD is also designed as a risk-based process, its understanding of human rights risk deviates from risk appraisals of more ‘conventional’ enterprise risk management systems. Specifically, while ‘regular’ risk-based due diligence focuses on the materiality of risks for the company, HRDD is all about assessing and mitigating risks for rightsholders (Fasterling 2017). The UNGPs are clear in pointing out that HRDD requires a switch of perspective from a corporate-centric to a rightsholder-centered interpretation of risk. Hence, HRDD requires more than simply integrating a human rights focus into existing due diligence or risk-management processes. A study assessing different approaches to HRDD yielded clear results in this regard: companies with a dedicated HRDD process that addressed human rights directly and explicitly identified adverse impacts in about 80 percent of their assessments, while companies that merely considered human rights implicitly through existing risk management processes only identified adverse impacts 20 percent of the time. (McCorquodale, Smit, Neely & Brookschallenges at the domestic levelThe UNGPs ask governments to make use of the full range of their possibilities to protect human rights in the business realm and to implement a smart mix of measures – national and international, soft and hard – to do so. Governments have generally responded reluctantly to this requirement. However, significant advances have been made in recent years in various jurisdictions, not least owed to the forceful campaigning around BHR issues by civil society organizations.At the policy level, some two dozen governments have issued so-called National Action Plans on BHR (NAPs) and many more are in the process of doing so. While such NAPs have been criticized for being vague and non-committal (Methven O’Brien, Mehra, Blackwell & Poulsen-Hansen 2016), they do outline a basic commitment of governments to BHR and designate it as a policy priority.However, perhaps more significant is the evolving trend in the legislative arena. As outlined earlier, a growing number of predominantly Western European states have enacted or are developing designated BHR legislation. While there is significant variance of such laws between jurisdictions, they tend to render HRDD mandatory for companies at various levels. As such, they tend to transform HRDD from a voluntary commitment into a binding obligation for businesses.This growing trend of a ‘hardening’ of the UNGPs in the domestic realm (Choudhury 2017; Scrhrempf-Stirling & Wettstein 2021) does not only show in the legislative, but also in the adjudicative space. BHR litigation is not a new phenomenon in principle. Litigators have brought civil lawsuits for human rights violations against multinational companies to the domestic courts of parent companies’ home states since the 1990s (Meeran 2021). However, while most of such cases were dismissed on the grounds of lacking jurisdiction of home state courts in the past, there have been significant advances in this regard in recent years. In a number of jurisdictions such as the UK, the Netherlands and Canada, courts have accepted jurisdiction for a few seminal cases and outlined promising paths for future cases to follow suit (Roorda & Leader 2021). It is to be expected that the above-described trend toward new BHR legislation will create further possibilities for victims of corporate human rights abuse to bring cases to the courts of multinationals’ home states.Accountability challenges at the international levelThe lack of binding force of the UNGPs for corporations has been lamented by critics all along (Nolan 2013; Deva & Bilchitz 2013). As a consequence, 10 years after John Ruggie put the UN Draft Norms to rest for good – a move that was later termed ‘Normicide’ – the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution at the initiative of Ecuador and South Africa to commence new negotiations on a binding international treaty on BHR in 2015 (Deva & Bilchitz 2017). While Western powers and the private sector keep opposing such binding instruments at the international level, countries of the Global South along with civil society organizations are supporting it. However, history is only partly repeating itself in this regard. The BHR landscape has changed profoundly in the past ten years; the UNGPs have fostered broad acceptance of a corporate responsibility to respect human rights and it is now for the opponents of such a view to provide plausible reasons why such a responsibility should not be binding. Nevertheless, the negotiations so far have made it clear that despite this changed context, the road to a binding instrument will be long and hard-fought. However, we have seen what perhaps few of us thought possible: five years into the negotiations, there still is aMerging business and human rights requires that we overcome two old paradigms. First, we must give up on the state-centrism that has characterized traditional human rights thinking and systematically include non-state actors, and among them businesses, as bearers of human rights obligations. Second, we must replace the corporate-centric, private outlook that has characterized CSR with an understanding of corporations as political institutions with public responsibilities that include respect for human rights. In a nutshell, we must move from the state-centric outlook on human rights and the corporate-centric view on corporate responsibility, to a rightsholder-centered understanding of business and human rights.Those old paradigms in our thinking on human rights and corporate responsibility have both obstructed our view on corporate human rights responsibility conceptually and also enabled the creation of structures that have made it difficult to put business and human rights into practice. Recently, the UNGPs have opened the door to breaking down some of those long-standing barriers to corporate human rights accountability and recent developments particularly in domestic legislative and judicative spaces give reason for hope that this door can be pushed open wider. 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| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/09/opinion-a-daunting-agenda-for-frances-eu-presidency/ | Opinion – A Daunting Agenda for France’s EU Presidency | Alexander Brotman | 1 | As France assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) this month, there is a daunting list of agenda items for Paris to contend with. Omicron’s wave may begin to recede shortly, but the battle to vaccinate and boost EU citizens remains a priority, with Macron taking a hardline stance against the unvaccinated. Simultaneously, regardless of whether Russia further invades Ukraine, this moment is one of the most serious tests of Europe’s security architecture and NATO’s defence posture since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Combined with ongoing tensions with Belarus over the migrant crisis on the Belarus-Poland border, and pivotal elections in France and Hungary in April, the next few months are likely to be as trying as ever for European unity.Macron’s ambitions for France’s EU presidency matches the rhetoric that he and other EU leaders like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have used over the past several years. Macron envisions a Europe that is ‘powerful in the world, fully sovereign, and master of its destiny’, one that embraces strategic autonomy and is less reliant on the United States. For Macron, the Biden administration’s rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan, and announcement of the AUKUS pact between the US, UK, and Australia, has revealed a consistent unreliability from Washington that echoes the hasty decision-making of the Trump years. Within the bloc, the EU’s economic power will remain significant with GDP growth of around 4.5% expected in 2022. However, Europe’s destiny risks being determined by individual member states that view full sovereignty as returning core competencies from Brussels to national capitals. As the EU begins to emerge from Omicron, clashing conceptions of sovereignty and competing priorities within member states may hinder collective engagement.The EU is often said to be at crisis or inflection points that will determine its future trajectory. The eurozone crisis, the migrant crisis of 2015-16, and the bloc’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic have all been trying moments for the union. For France, this moment presents a unique combination of domestic and external pressures that will challenge both French politics and the EU’s relations with its immediate neighbours, namely Russia. Domestically, the French presidential elections will occur in two rounds this April, with far-right candidates Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen grasping onto hot-button cultural issues over French national identity, immigration, and religion. Zemmour and Le Pen’s rhetoric risks inciting violence and further dividing French citizens at a time when patience is wearing thin.Macron’s recent comments that he wants to ‘piss off’ the unvaccinated are unlikely to enlarge his political base and provides ample fodder for the far-right to paint him as elitist and domineering. Likewise, the uproar from the far-right over the placement of the EU flag under the Arc de Triomphe is one example of the identity battles that will be prominent and continue to be espoused by Zemmour and Le Pen.In addition, after 16 years of Chancellor Merkel and a close German-Franco partnership between her and Macron, Germany now has a new coalition government led by Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats. Scholz’s coalition has made strong statements that align with Macron regarding Ukraine, Russian aggression, and the need for European unity and greater European sovereignty. However, the transition in German politics is an opportune moment for Vladimir Putin to test Berlin’s ambitions, and the first summit between Scholz and Putin will be critical to gauge whether Putin views Scholz to be a formidable adversary and interlocutor. Thus, France is the dominant political player in Europe right now and the steady hand by default, with the potential for even weaker political legitimacy for Macron depending on the far-right’s showing in the Aprilsecond election looming in Europe, concurrent to France’s presidential elections, will occur in Hungary. Hungary has proven to be a thorn in the EU’s side on many issues, most notably in relation to the rule of law and the bloc’s common migration policy. Should Viktor Orban win reelection, and despite his many differences with Brussels, Hungary is likely to remain an EU member state for some time, knowing the immense value Budapest has to reform the EU from within. Likewise, depending on the strength of the far-right vote in the French elections, Macron will need to deftly navigate Orban and his ruling Fidesz party’s place in crafting Europe’s destiny. ‘More Europe’ may be a hard sell for Macron after both the French and Hungarian elections, which may signal a deeper desire for more sovereignty and national control rather than grand designs for the future of Europe.Macron is often presented in the media, most notably in Sophie Pedder’s biography of his first year in office, as a grand strategist with outsized, grandiose ambitions for Europe and France’s role in it. Nicknamed ‘Jupiter’, he is a tireless reformer whose greatest battles are often fought with the entrenched elements of the state that he manages. These elements include France’s powerful trade unions and the combined forces of the Yellow Vests movement that have since latched onto the COVID-19 debate over vaccine passports. Upon entering the Elysée Palace, Macron was fully aware that reforming France would be a challenge that would create many enemies for him. However, he views his leadership of France as a long arc that may have short-term negative effects in order to place France in a more competitive and dominant position in Europe in the long-term.With the UK continuing to tussle with France and Brussels over the terms of its withdrawal from the EU, and Poland and Hungary engaged in rule of law and constitutional authority debates, Macron’s greatest challenge may be in just containing Europe rather than expanding its powers and capabilities. Thinking smaller may not come as easily to Macron, but for the duration of France’s EU presidency, the success of the union may be judged less on grandiosity and more on the competency and management of pre-existing disputes. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/05/rethinking-critical-ir-towards-a-plurilogue-of-cosmologies/ | Rethinking Critical IR: Towards a Plurilogue of Cosmologies | Hartmut Behr and Giorgio Shani | 0 | ‘Critical’ International Relations (IR) began as a strongly emancipatory and normative project. It sought to challenge the emerging neo-‘realist’ and neo-liberal hegemony in IR by contesting the nature of its ontological and epistemological claims which would serve to reify and reproduce existing power relations in a highly unequal world structured by capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the nation-state. However, we argue in our recent article “Rethinking Emancipation in a Critical IR: Normativity, Cosmology, and Pluriversal Dialogue” that it seems to have lost its initial focus and risks forgoing its emancipatorypotential.An integral part of recapturing emancipation is, however, an interrogation of normativity. This seems to be the condition of the possibilities for a post-western IR that views critical theorising not as an exclusive product of European thought, but identifies critical discourses in different cosmological traditions. Part of a more differentiated critique consists therefore in a re-conceptualisation of emancipation that does not reproduce a dichotomic opposition between those who would need to be emancipated and those who emancipate. Emancipation thus needs to be emancipated from the ‘self’/’other’ dichotomy. The de-essentialisation of ‘self’-’other’ dichotomies is crucial since the Western ‘self’ is historically constituted by relations of exploitation and hierarchy over that which it is not. Every language of a ‘self’ and ‘other’ that does not actively de-essentialise and de-construct its origins and legacies from a global perspective of difference(s), thus reproduces a certain, culturally specific (i.e., often liberal) subjectivity. It thus renders invisible the historical relations which made the exercise of liberal agency possible in the first place by downplaying the impact of colonialism in the historical construction of ‘post-western’ selves.In order to recuperate an understanding of emancipation which avoids ‘ontological imperialism’ (i.e., imposing conceptions and understandings of the “Self” onto every “other” culture or individual; see Levinas 1989), we suggest the concepts of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ normativity. Thereby, we seek inspiration and intellectual guidelines within the Western philosophical tradition that itself must then be revised as every encounter with politically, culturally, or religiously different cosmological discourses points to the very limits of this tradition. Therefore, the concepts of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ normativity, giving initial orientation to approach and understand difference, must be amended in encountering different cosmological traditions in order to facilitate inter-cosmological understanding and exchange. For this exchange we suggest the term “plurilogue”. Plurilogue implies that there are more than two voices and perspectives simultaneously that are equally legitimate (and worthy of respect). Thus, plurilogue implies a deep commitment to perspectivity and inclusion.The term “plurilogue” seems to be only rarely used and this without further specification or definition. It is thus far from being a concept. We suggest it as such but are aware of initial stages. Among the rare use of the term “plurilogue” is an article by Lucy Rykers on “Woman of Colour in Coalition: A Plurilogue with Lorde, Mohanty, and Lugones” which describes the underlying proposition of plurilogue as “theory is never produced in isolation, but exists within a broader corpus of knowledge from a multiplicity of social locations and perspectives”. In this understanding, Rykers draws upon an earlier paper by Shireen Roshanravan on “Motivating Coalition: Women of Color and Epistemic Disobedience”.The term “plurilogue” is also used by Politics and Philosophy blog (http://irnrd.blogspot.com/p/plurilogue.html) whose organisers derive plurilogue from John Rawls term “omnilogue” (Rawls 1995). Whereas accordingly plurilogue emphasises the simultaneous plurality and diversity of discourses, the Rawlsian and thereof derived understandings presuppose one from of rationality as yardstick for the legitimacy and inclusion of discourses. We critique such an understanding – that is also present in a Habermasian and Gadamerian understanding of discourse – as a form of ontological imperialism and epistemologicalEmancipation through “thin” and “thick” normativity and their interrelationWhile ‘thin’ normativity describes the norms behind deconstruction and critique, ‘thick’ normativity describes the norms behind active political and moral propositions. Both versions of normativity are not only always present in a political actor’s and analyst’s worldview and actual practice – whether, or not, conscious and pleasing – but are indeed necessary to understand, explain, and engage critically, i.e., emancipatory, with different positions, politically and theoretically. ‘Thin’ and ‘thick’ normativity thus each have their own significance and role in practice and in theory. They are co-constitutive and co-original.‘Thick’ normativity is required to leave the circle of critique and to advance from the ethics of critique to political practice, re-articulating agency. Following deconstruction, we argue we need reconstruction. Critique and deconstruction, however, do not provide the normative orientation necessary for action and the creation of political order (for this argument, see also Behr, 2019). We must formulate actionable norms even if they are contestable; and they will always be contested in a pluralist world, thus global plurilogue, openness to, and empathy for difference(s) are indispensable. Such a reconstructive moment, however, will not be prescriptive. It must account for the plurality of theoretical and practical worldviews. And it is exactly this moment of correction that describes the second relation between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ normativity: ‘thin’ normativity functions as critical corrective, claiming openness to, and the de-essentialisation of, difference(s) in case ‘thick’ normativity goes ‘wrong’, i.e., if political and moral narratives foreclose the empathy for difference(s) and thereby indeed undermine plurality and perspectivity. Then, ‘thin’ normativity as deconstructive normativity comes into operation to correct and critique respective narratives.We develop thin normativity following Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction that is deconstructive of essentialisms and a corrective to thick normative political and moral claims (inter alia Derrida 1993: 19; 1997: 13; 2007: 24). Thick normativity – needed for a self-reflective stance towards our own positionality, to make such positionality explicit in the first place, and to develop the language and concepts to engage different cosmologies and their own normative claims from within – is derived from the work of Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse (Horkheimer 1937 [1999]; Marcuse 2009). Based on a reading of Horkheimer and Marcuse, we can formulate the following main characteristics of thick normativity: (1) critique embraces a plurality of values; (2) critique distinguishes between different forms of epistemological claims which may correspond to different forms of knowledge; (3) critique and its envisioned alternatives are generated from historical judgement and imagination.These claims serve as a starting point for critical theorising but need to be revised in order to take into account different epistemological and ontological claims in order to facilitate a global plurilogue. To sum up: Thin normativity is critical and self-critical of thick normative claims. Thus, thin normativity is a corrective of thick normative (political, moral, religious, etc.) claims. And it is this relation that leads us to reformulate thick normativity in encountering differences in global plurilogues.Cosmology and Reconceptualising Emancipation in Post-Western IRIn order to connect critical theorising with different cultural traditions in a post-Western IR, we suggest the concept of cosmology. Cosmologies refer to sets of culturally specific ontological and epistemological propositions about the origins and the evolution of the cosmos and our position in it. These propositions evince and provide responses to existential questions concerning the basic parameters of human life including existence and being, finitude, and the experience of difference. Cosmologies link theories of origins with a set of normative political and moral claims which offer the possibility of going beyond what is and of constructing meaning through notions such as salvation, moksha or nirvana (see Shani and Behera 2021). Such normative claims correspond with our understanding of ‘thick’ normativity. Cosmology can be applied to categorise different cultural traditions which encompass notions of the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. All cosmologies have a notion of the sacred as well as the profane, thus there are no exclusively ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ cosmologies. The concept of cosmology, therefore, has the advantage of parochialising the western distinction between the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ domains. It can be differentiated from ‘culture’ which refers to those cosmological fragments which remain after colonisation has reduced living worlds to essentialised, ahistorical objects for study through a process of de-sacralisation; and from ‘religion’ which refers to notions of the ‘sacred’ severed from living cosmologies so as to constitute a distinct domain from the ‘profane’ which does not exist in the everyday lived practice of many peoples throughout thean emancipatory dimension can be identified in cosmologies which includes the transcendence of any ‘self’ beyond and above its eventual essentialisation. Such transcendence would permit different cosmologies to engage with one another, opening-up the possibility of a global plurilogue. We argue therefore that instead of translating cosmological claims into a universal secular language, an attempt should be made to understand these claims in their own terms. Sensitised to cosmological differences, post-western understandings of emancipation should permit the articulation of multiple claims to freedom without first, categorising them according to a ‘secular’/’religious’ divide; and second, without prioritising any one tradition as having a monopoly over defining emancipation. This brings us to the problem of how to deal with multiple and potentially competing thick normative claims. It is here where an engagement with ‘thin’ normativity is necessary.To sum up: Whereas ‘thick’ normativity proposes ontological and epistemological worldviews and moral claims of cosmologies themselves, ‘thin’ normativity defends the spaces for plurilogue and openness, operating as a critical corrective of thick normative claims potentially foreclosing through essentialisation of those spaces that make critical theory and practice possible. Theorists, we argued, must be aware furthermore of the permanent possibility of counterarguments. A dialogue between different cosmological traditions on the meaning and importance of emancipation and on the normative orientation of and for politics then represents a thick normativity. The characteristics of a ‘thick’ normativity for a plurilogue can thus consist of the following reformulation of Horkheimer’s and Marcuse’s criteria of normativity: (1) critique embraces a plurality of values since we inhabit different universes; (2) critique distinguishes between different forms of epistemological claims which may correspond to different forms of knowledge including those which have been marginalised and fragmented by the ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000); (3) critique and its envisioned alternatives are generated from historical judgement and imagination influenced by and specific to multiple and different cosmologies; and, finally, (4) this necessitates an emancipatory project to decolonise our imagination rooted in different cosmologies and to uncover the pluriversal relationality which binds different cosmological fragments with one another.ConclusionsCritical IR, it its current instantiation, is based on “ontological imperialism”, imposing conceptions and understandings of the “Self” onto every “other” culture or individual. Following Lévinas, we conclude this to be form of epistemological (and subsequently often political) violence. In order to understand the “other” in its own terms, rather than imputing our understanding of its needs and desires onto it, we need to engage with “thick” normative claims which should be open to revisions and self-critique, what we term “thin” normativity. Collectively, “thick” and “thin” normativity are necessary conditions for any communicative encounter between different cosmologies which we defined as sets of normative ontological and epistemological claims about origins of the cosmos and our place in it. We term this communicative encounter a ‘plurilogue’. A plurilogue is more than a ‘global conversation’ (Fierke and Jabri 2019) in that, like a dialogue, it is transformative and plurivocal but differs from Habermasian and Gadamerian understandings of dialogue in that it is open to multiple cosmological traditions simultaneously and it does not privilege one argumentative rationality as a mode of communication. Furthermore, a global plurilogue may not, as in Habermasian and Gadamerian conceptions of dialogue, result in an inter-subjective understanding leading to agreement or a ‘fusion of horizons’. Plurilogue is and leads tothe articulation of less exclusionary ontologies and epistemologies than presently characterise international relations. A ‘critical’ theory of international relations (as opposed to Critical IR), we argue, emerges from, practices of engaging, listening to, and eventually critiquing each other’s “thick” normative claims in a global plurilogue made possible by a commitment to “thin” normativity. IR as a discipline needs to be deconstructed to reveal the thick normative narratives upon which it is based and to facilitate a global plurilogue about the central themes of international relations (such as war and peace, security, poverty and inequality, order and justice, gender and sexuality, colonialism and race, migration, or climate change) without epistemic (or political) violence so that different cosmological perspectives are taken into(further to those hyperlinked)Behr, Hartmut, ‘Towards a Political Concept of Reversibility in International Relations: Bridging Political Philosophy and Policy Studies’, European Journal of International Relations 25, 4 (2019): 1212–35.Derrida, Jacques, Aporias (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).Derrida, Jacques, Psyche. Inventions of the Other, Volume I (Stanford: Stanford California Press, 2007).Horkheimer, Max, ‘Traditional and critical theory’. In: O’Connell (ed) Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum Press, 1999), pp. 188–243.Derrida, Jacques, Deconstruction in a Nutshell. A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997).Fierke, Karin and Jabri, Vivienne. ‘Global conversations: Relationality, embodiment and power in the move towards a Global IR’, Global Constitutionalism, 8:3 (2019), 506–535.Lévinas, Emmanuel, ‘Ethics as First Philosophy’, The Levinas Reader, eds. Sean Hand and Basil Blackwell (Oxford 1989), 75–87.Marcuse, Herbert, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (London: MayFly Books, 2009).Quijano, Aníbal. “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.” Translated by Michael Ennis. Nepantla: Views from South 1 (3) (2000): 533–80.Rawls, John, ‘Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas. The Journal of Philosophy 92, 3 (1995): 132-180.Shani, Giorgio, and Navnita Chadha Behera, “Provincialising International Relations through a Reading of Dharma.” Review of International Studies (2021), 1–20. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/05/re-thinking-deterrence-in-gray-zone-conflict/ | Rethinking Deterrence in Gray Zone Conflict | Catherine Delafield, Sarah Fishbein, J Andrés Gannon, Erik Gartzke, Jon Lindsay, Peter Schram and Estelle Shaya | 0 | Rethinking Deterrence in Gray Zone ConflictCatherine Delafield, Sarah Fishbein, J Andrés Gannon, Erik Gartzke, Jon Lindsay, Peter Schram and Estelle ShayaDownload PDFJan 5 2022•324viewsFabrikaSimf/ShuttershockA particular form of international competition dominates the headlines today. Whether it is the “little green men” in Ukraine, “little blue men” in the South China Sea, Iranian backed militias throughout the Middle East, or the malicious attacks pervasive throughout the cyber-domain, scholars and practitioners agree that international competition is regularly occurring in a gray area between war and peace. The key feature of these gray zone conflicts is that actors are “pulling-their-punches” by intentionally limiting the intensity and capacity with which they conduct military operations. Rather than overt military actions that attempt to resolve issues or disputes, gray-zone conflict involves destabilization, disruption, and subversion. By engaging in the gray-zone, revisionist states can gain concessions from their adversaries while avoiding the usual costs of war. While there is much to be said on the novelty of these methods (how new is gray zone conflict?) or on their correct labeling (are these hybrid wars, non-linear wars, salami tactics, limited wars, hassling, or military operations other than war?), we focus on the implications of gray zone conflict. Does the gray zone conflict observed today actually represent a failure of Western deterrence? Or is it something different altogether?Recent literature suggests that the conventional conceptions of deterrence are inadequate to address burgeoning threats in the gray zone. In the most basic framework of war, a state deters challengers by demonstrating how costly war would be for them. Gray-zone conflict complicates this model, as defenders can turn to gray-zone conflict to test their adversaries or gain concessions without going to war. Capable defenders, in turn, appear ill-equipped to respond to revisionism in the gray zone. While these conflicts may not be the bloodiest, they still create international instability and undermine the existing international order. In this framing, the gray zone conflict observed today constitutes a deterrence failure.Our research challenges this convention by viewing gray-zone conflict as a symptom of deterrence success, not failure. Just as conflict is a continuum, so too is deterrence. Deterrence not only shapes whether a challenge emerges but also how challenges manifest. The more aggressive a transgression or a challenge is, the less deterrence has worked. An enemy that pulls its punches to avoid triggering a larger contest is not fighting as effectively as it might in unconstrained circumstances. Even if the challenger resorts to force, fear of escalation by the defender could cause the challenger to adopt a less productive military strategy.We thus have two alternative theories: gray zone conflict could represent a deterrence failure or a deterrence success. On one hand, gray-zone attacks could be the best option for a challenger, where low-level conflict can be effective and maximize cost-benefit analyses by reducing resources spent in conflict. On the other hand, gray-zone conflict might be a compromise, second-best option for a challenger, where the challenger is externally deterred from more aggressive action.To arbitrate these two contrasting conceptions, we can consider instances where the defender is more (or less) willing to go to war. If the challenger’s gray zone activities are more constrained when faced with a greater threat from war, then the defender has achieved some degree of deterrence success. If instead the challenger’s gray zone activities are unaffected when facing a greater threat from war, then the defender has probably failed to deter thefind that Russian behavior in Europe is consistent with Russia being deterred. Consider the Russian interventions in Estonia, Ukraine, and Georgia, which vary in their relationship to NATO. In 2004, Estonia joined NATO. Then in 2007, Russia launched a wave of denial-of-service cyber-attacks against Estonia when a Soviet-era statue was removed. While these cyber-attacks were shocking at the time, they were addressed by Estonian domestic law enforcement, and they represent the low end of Russian gray zone aggression. Russia thus exercised relative restraint against a NATO target.Contrast Estonia with Georgia. In 2008, Russia intervened militarily in South Ossetia and Abkhazia after NATO announced a loose pathway to membership for Georgia. Because a NATO response was so unlikely, Russian actions in Georgia were far more aggressive, deliberate, and unconstrained – Russia did not conceal the identity of its forces and used massed conventional arms. Russia retains over 10,000 troops in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia region.Russian activities in Ukraine represent a middle ground. In 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula and have since supported separatist groups and engaged in ground skirmishes and cyber campaigns against Ukrainian forces. Despite this use of force over the past six years, what is happening in Ukraine falls far short of what transpired in Georgia. While NATO does not have a formal commitment to Ukraine (like Georgia), Ukraine’s geopolitical position (including its shared borders with Poland and Hungary) make it an important part of NATO’s periphery.In areas where NATO has greater access and interest (e.g., Estonia), Russia has greatly limited its gray zone activities. In areas with low NATO resolve (e.g., Georgia), Russia pulled no punches. Ukraine illustrates the continuum of increasing gray zone force with decreasing deterrent threat, marking a moderate level of both factors. The Ukraine case also demonstrates that Russia did indeed select its level of gray zone force based on NATO deterrence, rather than optimizing its level of aggression. Crimea is strategically important to Moscow due to the Black Sea port of Sevastopol; if Russia acted solely based on its resolve, it would prioritize Ukrainian intervention over Georgia. However, despite higher stakes in Ukraine, Russia exhibited restraint.In addition to these case studies, we ran an analysis with a dataset of 82 Russian interventions from 1994 to 2018. The results of this analysis conform to our expectations, demonstrating that Russian gray-zone behavior does not occur despite NATO’s deterrent threat, but rather because of it. Russian gray-zone intervention is less intense in response to NATO membership. While Russia may use special operations in states that project low deterrence threats, it shifts its interference to cyberattacks or attempts at election interference in states that project higher deterrence threats.Even if gray zone conflict represents a kind of “deterrence success,” it is still costly, destructive, and undesirable. A natural response to the proliferation of gray-zone challenges is that NATO and its allies should be as prepared to beat its adversaries in low-level conflicts as they are in full-scale wars. Today, there is a growing consensus thatthe Westshould focus more resources on how to defend against gray zone attacks. Building stronger cyber walls, preparing troops that can respond to gray zone challenges, increasing the capabilities of our coast guard and air force, and preparing for a fight that does not involve direct confrontation with enemy soldiers are issues at the forefront of how the U.S. military should adapt in a world of gray-zone attacks. By building a more robust gray zone response, NATO may succeed in deterring these limited attacks in Europe.We hope that this is the case. However, these ideas must be taken with some caution. Our research suggests that improving gray zone capabilities may be counter-productive. After all, gray zone conflict is characterized by restraint. By making gray zone conflict a worse option within the conflict continuum, the United States may find that its adversaries are less deterred against greater forms of conflict than they had anticipated. Of course, deterrence is not dead here, and it is possible to prevent adversaries from engaging in hostile acts. Specifically, by improving capabilities across the conflict continuum, NATO and its allies can prevent its adversaries from “designing around” a capable gray zone deterrent by escalating, and instead properly deter revisionistUkraine stands today as a case of a state trying to deter an adversary primarily with a robust gray zone force. Over the past seven years, NATO has funneled assistance to Ukraine. Today, it is increasingly effective at countering Russia’s gray zone attacks. This has made the current gray zone conflict less promising for Moscow. However, what has not changed is Ukraine’s tenuous relationship with NATO and Russia’s conventional superiority. With gray zone conflict becoming a worse option for Russia, analysis suggests that Moscow today is considering the possibility of an escalated form of conflict. We hope that Ukraine’s gray zone successes are in fact encouraging Moscow to reconsider its low-level operations in the country. However, policymakers would be remiss if they did not consider the destabilizing effects that arming their allies for gray zone conflict can have when a greater war is not off the table. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2022/01/03/chaos-and-corruption-in-west-africa-lessons-from-sierra-leone/ | Chaos and Corruption in West Africa: Lessons from Sierra Leone | Martin Duffy | 0 | It is often-times said that Things Fall Apart. In this case, especially so when referring to the 1959 book written by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe as a subtle metaphor for Africa’s fragile post-colonial governance. Chaos also features strongly in contemporary literary and political discourse on African governance. In his sequel to Africa Betrayed, George Ayittey characterizes a continent in chaos at the end of the twentieth century – a political economy in free-fall undermined by the incursion of foreign powers. Indigenous systems of government pre-dating European confiscation manifestly wrecked by colonial and post-colonial systems. Africa is thus paralysed, unable to move forward. West Africa is no exception. In Chaos in Africa, Ayittey might have predicted the recent series of municipal disasters in Sierra Leone which are surely evidence of a country at crisis point.Once again ordinary Sierra Leoneans are paying the cruel price for appalling safety standards, corrupt municipalities, and commercial operations which city councils prioritized at the expense of public safety. On 5 November 2021 more than a hundred people died in a fireball caused by a petrol truck crash in the country’s capital, Freetown. There had been numerous warnings about the dangers of fuel trucks in city streets, but these had gone unheeded. Fuel companies were unwilling to take the longer suburban access to avoid the chaos of Freetown’s Centre. City Hall officials and the police had both allegedly been bought off, so traffic enforcement was predictably lax.David Harris’ 2020 book Sierra Leone: A Political History portrays the decent into chaos experienced by Sierra Leone, its catastrophic civil war and faltering attempt to build a state given the country’s immensely problematic colonial legacies. War then precipitated a huge and largely unsuccessful international effort to construct a ‘liberal peace’, before largely abandoning Sierra Leone as a laboratory for post-Cold War interventions. It is a foreword to the governance chaos of present-day Freetown. Even in the loose administrations of West Africa it is rare that such a combination of corruption and incompetence would combine to incinerate over a hundred civilians and leave hundreds severely injured. The past decade has seen multiple hovercraft, helicopter, and ferry disasters which led to promised public inquiries but little in the way of mitigation. The victims were buried, the injured hospitalized as best as the city’s antiquated health system could provide, and life went on.In March 2021, over 80 people were injured after a major fire in one of the city’s slums. Consequently, over 5,000 people were displaced and are unlikely ever to be re-housed. In 2017 over 1,000 people were killed after heavy rains led to a mudslide, also leaving around 3,000 survivors homeless. Reckless deforestation had left the entire city at the peril of land collapse. In this latest horror story, a massive explosion occurred when a fuel tanker collided with a lorry.Fuel spilled before igniting and the resulting inferno engulfed bystanders and vehicles over a block of this dilapidated west African capital.Shocking footage broadcast by local media outlets showed badly charred bodies in the streets surrounding the tanker. Horrific sights were also broadcast on state TV as viewers witnessed a passenger crammed bus instantly became a moving crematorium.President Julius Maada Bio announced his government’s shock, at “the horrendous loss of life” and pledged “everything to support the affected families”. Freetown Mayor, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr echoed him. The state-run morgue was over-run with charred bodies, and the hospital system pushed to breaking point. This gruesome incident occurred around ten in the evening close to the Choithram Supermarket, a densely populated corner. Nearby market stalls were caught up in the flames. Brima Sesay, of Sierra Leone’s National Disaster Agency, described how “a fireball spread into traffic”. Fuel looters then added to the chaos as motorbike-taxi riders nearby started collecting the leaking petrol, causing a traffic jam, before themselves getting caught up in the subsequentepisode raises wider questions about the governance of Sierra Leone and the endemic corruption which paralyses municipalities across West Africa. Sierra Leone is hardly a tourist destination, but it is home to an enormous international NGO effort covering every area of aid from foodstuffs to contraception.Opinions differ about the safety of travellers in Sierra Leone. According to official government advisories the crime-riddled, chaotic country should be avoided at all costs. However, many travel bloggers disagree, saying Sierra Leone is one of the friendliest places in West Africa known for its beautiful beaches. The U.S. Department of State says to “Exercise Increased Caution”. At any rate, visitors will see Sierra Leone as one of the world’s poorest nations still recovering from ethnic war and disease, and now further threatened by Covid19. International action has done little to correct state insipidity and endemic corruption.Freetown’s street-scape is a public health disaster. Public transport like kekes (motor tricycles), poda-podas (minibuses), and ocadas (motorcycle taxis) all serve as “Covid super-spreaders”. There is a “cost of living” meltdown. High inflation and rising fuel prices have occasionally stimulated public protests. This latest petrol-truck inferno exposes how little progress the country has made in municipal reform. Indeed, an investigation into past corruption is shining a light on wider questions of political accountability. Freetown’s urban geography reflects the bifurcation of politics in Sierra Leone – where political discourse permeates every debate, and government and public feel closely enmeshed. Political division is written even in election boundary maps. Perhaps because of the nation’s recent history of civil war and Ebola epidemic, the Sierra Leonean public are intensely politicized. Several (long over-due) judge-led reports are expected to expose gross mismanagement under the previous administration, sacked in 2018. By the time of publication, the new government have already tarnished their own reputations.Previous reports named former president Ernest Bai Koroma, who denies any wrongdoing. Koroma was interviewed by the Anti-Corruption Commission and the government has placed a travel ban on all accused. When President Julius Maada Bio published his report on 24 September, he said he would “expunge corruption” but few are holding their breaths. The governing party, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), was dominant in the early 1960s, capitulating to the All-People’s Congress (APC) following the 1967 election. The APC subsequently repressed any opposition and installed a one-party state until a multi-party system returned in the 1990s. Since the end of the civil war, the country has had two peaceful transfers of power and achieved some improvement in governance. The two main parties are defined by their relation to the country’s ethnic groups, rather than political ideology. The Mende people in the south traditionally support the SLPP, while the Temne people in the north typically vote for the APC. This poses fundamental questions for Sierra Leone’s democracy as it is so fixed along ethnic lines.Abdul Fatoma, chief of the NGO, Campaign for Human Rights, believes that corruption fuels ethno-regionalism. He argues that the politicization of ethnic identities in Sierra Leone is not a historical trait but the divisive effect of corruption. He points to marriages between ethnicities as evidence that the inequitable distribution of resources is fomenting division, rather than inherent ethnically based discord. Dependence on foreign aid is another cause of the ideological poverty of the two main parties. By 2005, aid made up nearly half of Sierra Leone’s gross national income (GNI), with its former colonial ruler Britain making the highest individual contribution.The conditions attached to aid often promote the donor’s own ideology – for instance, the IMF has pressured the government to abolish fuel subsidies. By comparison, government rarely acquiesces with donors on culture-related issues, such as female genital mutilation, because they are seen as electorallyis unlikely that judges will ever resolve the corruption problem because those favoured by the SLPP leadership are protected from prosecution. The chances that anyone senior in the SLPP will face the Anti-Corruption Commission are zero. So, democratic accountability could prove a mere tool of partisanship that injures democracy in the long term. In Sierra Leone IR specialists may diagnose a condition which is both endemic and parasitical to the West African political system. Sierra Leone suffers acutely from electoral-ism (the false assumption that elections equal democracy) and a reminder of the potential damage to democratic processes when any one of its facets is eroded.Whether the current president will pursue corruption impartially remains unclear. With elections scheduled for 2023, Sierra Leone will continue to act as a reminder of the inherent fragility of West African democracy. The latest inferno in the nation’s capital is yet another reminder of the volatile mix of corruption and incompetence. Rural Sierra Leone is decimated with the corpses of civil war and ravaged with the cumulative effects of HIV, Ebola and now Covid-19. This latest tragedy is yet another sign that Sierra Leoneans remain encumbered by politicians they least deserve.In her recent study, Out of War, Mariane Ferme offers an ethnographic assessment of Sierra Leone as a case-study of West African chaos and corruption. It remains a traumatized nation vulnerable to “leader-imposters” and which has absorbed collective anxieties linked to particular phases of past conflict (or “chronotopes”) which are constantly repeated in contemporary events. For lack of better leadership, bribes begot short-cuts and even the most basic principles of urban safety management are ignored. Civic chiefs weaponize their power by shrewdly manipulating tribal cleavages.For Mikhail Bakhtin, chronotopes held together the unity of time and place in a single narrative. In Sierra Leone a series of political dictators have cleverly exploited racial fears, depriving its people of a shared narrative. In a chronotope, citizens visualize for themselves events as a changing spatial situation with a proportionate change in time. Recent Sierra Leone leaders have distorted these chronotopes so they are only visualized tribally. Communality is sacrificed in the interests of ethnic electoral races, and the ultimate cost of collective citizenship. Each election justifies a new round of ethnic rhetoric which blinds voters to the collective immiserisation of their lives, and of their country’s economic and urban infer-structure.Possessed with a persuasive cocktail of apparent electoralism, its politicians shrewdly manage to persuade their people that elections alone deliver democratic reform, while strangling them of genuine voter alternatives. The events of recent months culminating in a series of municipal disasters, demonstrate that nothing could be further from the truth in Sierra Leone or any West African state today. As in Achebe’s writings, Sierra Leone is falling apart. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/31/opinion-looking-behind-the-delimitation-exercise-in-jammu-and-kashmir/ | Opinion – Looking Behind the Delimitation Exercise in Jammu and Kashmir | Maqsood Hussain | 1 | Tension has been rife since the Indian government passed ‘The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019’, which downgraded the prior semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh into two centrally governed Union Territories. The move stemmed from the long-standing ideological position of the proponents of Hindutva (a nationalist ideology of turning India into Hindu nation) of which the BJP is a political face. Jammu and Kashmir being the only Muslim-majority region in otherwise Hindu dominated India was considered a roadblock in the Hindutva project. Before 2019, Article 370 of India’s constitution had given Jammu and Kashmir its semi-autonomous character. The Hindu Right wing held that Article 370 was a provision to break Kashmir from India and viewed Muslim-dominated politics in Jammu and Kashmir as detrimental to national interests. Hence, a reading down of Articles 370 and 35A opened the doors for subsequent stages of political engineering.Now with the report of the Delimitation Commission giving more seats to Jammu than Kashmir, despite the latter being more populous, there appears a clear-headed attempt towards the progressive accomplishment of the right-wing project of marginalising the majority. Following the Reorganization Act, the central grip on Jammu and Kashmir has cemented with the extension of numerous legislative and executive measures. However, these measures may prove transitory once statehood is restored, as has been promised by federal Home Minister on the floor of central legislature. To circumvent the anticipated situation, the central government constituted the ‘Delimitation Commission’ under provisions of Part V of The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019,tasked with the redrawing of electoral constituencies, for Jammu And Kashmir only, contrary to the norm of constituting the commission for the whole of country or group of its constituents. The debates surrounding the delimitation process assumed significance in the context of current demographic composition and distribution of electoral constituencies in Jammu And Kashmir.The UT of Jammu and Kashmir, as it exists today, consists of two distinct regions: Jammu (a Hindu dominated) and Kashmir (Muslim dominated) with 37 electoral constituencies for the former and 46 for the latter giving Kashmir-based political parties edge over the formation of government in first-past-the-post system. The fact that in the post-partition history of Jammu and Kashmir all Prime and Chief Ministers have been Muslim, mainly from Kashmir region attests to the above statement. This has generated resentment and perception of discrimination in the Hindu dominated Jammu region.The present delimitation exercise was widely seen as an attempt to disturb the existing balance of the distribution of electoral seats, thereby, undercutting the Kashmir’s influence over the politics of Jammu and Kashmir. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), a Kashmir-based party who last time formed government in Jammu and Kashmir in alliance with the BJP has boycotted the commission for its partisan character and predictable outcome. The last delimitation exercise held in 1994–95 after the 1981 census added 11 seats with Jammu getting one seat more (from 32 to 37) than Kashmir (from 42 to 46). The Hindu nationalists decry the previous delimitation commissions for being biased against Jammu and their Kashmir-centric approach.The Reorganization Act stipulates the creation of seven more electoral seats in Jammu and Kashmir and delimitation commission is holding consultations and negotiations with relevant stakeholders in the UT for the purpose. The BJP who has its bastion located in Jammu found this an ideal window of opportunity to get a better deal for Jammu – an important step in the realization of dream of getting a Hindu Chief Minister for Jammu and Kashmir. The modus operandi, in popular opinion, would be to bestow more seats to BJP-dominated Jammu and tie up with any Kashmir based political party in government formation where BJP would be a major partner. This seemed realistic after Delimitation Commission said that their final report will take into account the factors such as topography, difficult terrain, means of communication and convenience available while delimiting seven additional seats for the 83-member Assembly, besides granting reservation to Schedule Tribe (ST) and Schedule Caste (ST)granting reservation to SC’s and ST’s is a norm and provided for in the constitution of India, the newly focus on above mentioned factors, not worthy of consideration in previous Commissions, seemed to give credence to allegations of Commission’s objective being disempowering of Kashmiris and Kashmir-based political parties. The fundamental criterion, according to articles 81 and 170 of constitution of India, for redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies has to be a ‘population’ as ascertained in the last preceding census.Topographically, Jammu is more complex than Kashmir. Furthermore, the principle of constituting a Delimitation Commission after every census held after every decade itself is reflective of the significance of population as the fundamental criterion in redrawing electoral constituencies. The Delimitation Commission’s weight on some of the hitherto secondary factors was understood to intentionally liquidate the importance of the population factor, the only criterion where Kashmir might have got an advantage.Relatedly, one of the objectives of getting a Hindu Chief Minister, which the present exercise was allegedly geared towards, was to obtain a stamp of popular legitimacy on all central legislative and executive measures taken so far in Jammu and Kashmir. This assumes significance given that there are petitions in the Supreme Court of India challenging the Centre’s unilateral decision of stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous character. Moreover, increasing Jammu’s electoral heft would ensure a shift of centre in political gravity from Kashmir to Jammu which is widely viewed in federal corridors of power as more conducive to Indian interests than Kashmir-based politics.The apprehensions harboured by the people of Jammu and Kashmir regarding the Delimitation Commission came true when the commission made the report public on December 20 2021, which proposed six more seats for Jammu and only one for Kashmir. The Kashmir-based parties have rejected the report as divisive. Their argument is in line with Articles 81 and 170 which make population the defining criterion for delimiting new constituencies. The new arrangement, if implemented, will take Jammu’s tally of seats to 43 and that of Kashmir’s to 47 – giving an edge to Jammu-based parties, among which the BJP is currently in a dominant position, in any future government formation. This will enable BJP to form a government in the state with the support of any convenient party.The two commonly used practices for gerrymandering are ‘cracking’ and ‘packing’. Cracking splits the opposition party’s vote base among several constituencies while packing does the opposite – concentrating opposing party’s vote base in one district to enable the governing party to win surrounding districts. With sixteen seats reserved for Schedule Tribe (ST) and Schedule Caste (ST) communities in the proposed draft, it leaves little wiggle room to figure out how new constituencies will be carved out following the logic of packing and cracking. However, if history is anything to go by, it warns us that in any democratic set-up, crafting policy which serves to generate the perception of exclusion in a majority may, at best, yield transitory dividends – but turn out to be counter-productive in the long-run. The political history of Kashmir, in particular, offers insights in this direction. |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/28/debating-the-legacies-of-james-m-buchanan-and-neoliberalism/ | Debating the Legacies of James M. Buchanan and Neoliberalism | Craig Myers | 0 | “Ideas have consequences,” as Richard Weaver memorably put it. In International Relations the idea known as Neoliberalism—characterized by individual choice in economics and politics, reduced taxes and trade barriers, and opposition to regulation and central planning—has been ascendant for the past 75 years. During this period there have been quantifiable “consequences” such as increased life expectancy and income, and reduced poverty around the world, as neoliberal economics manifested itself in “globalization.” Ideas have origins, and neoliberalism can be traced in part to the late economist James M. Buchanan, a native of middle Tennessee, where his legacy lives on. However, ideas also have opponents, and this Western-style world political-economic system is facing increased criticism on the world stage, especially in the Global South as the once-surging tide of new liberal democratic governments ebbs, and in the classroom as competing IR theories gain ground. A 2017 survey of IR faculty by the Teaching, Research & International Policy (TRIP) found that Constructivism had become the most prevalent teaching approach compared to other theories including Liberalism and Realism. Pockets of persistent income inequality and inconsistent economic progress are touted as evidence that the “Washington Consensus” has failed and alternatives such as China’s so-called “Beijing Consensus,” India’s dirigisme economic system, development economics in Africa and South America, and even a transnational authority to oversee globalization should be considered. In recent years, neoliberal scholars have been forced to defend the idea’s foundations and founders against academic attacks, most notably from Duke historian Nancy MacLean in her 2018 book “Democracy in Chains.”Buchanan and the Mount Pelerin SocietyThe philosophical foundation for neoliberalism was laid in the 1940s–1980s by scholars united in their belief that individuals acting on rational self-interest in economic and political decisions in a constitutional system ultimately benefit society, and in their opposition to state efforts to limit or direct those decisions. This transatlantic association was formalized in 1947 as the Mount Pelerin Society (MPS) by Friedrich Hayek, later joined by Frank Knight, Ludwig Von Mises, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, and Buchanan, a 1986 recipient of a Nobel Prize for his work on “public choice” theory. Buchanan served as president of the MPS from 1984–86. Born in 1919 on a farm in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University (1940), a M.A. degree in economics from the University of Tennessee (1941), and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago (1948). Buchanan taught at the University of Tennessee, Florida State, University of Virginia, the University of California-Los Angeles, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and George Mason University. Influenced by Knight, whom he studied under in the 1940s at the University of Chicago, along with Knut Wicksell, Gordon Tullock, Hayek, and von Mises, Buchanan became part of the Chicago School and later Virginia School of Economics. Buchanan said Knight and Hayek convinced him “that the problem of social order is not scientific in the standard sense. Second, I was greatly influenced by Knut Wicksell’s admonition that economists cease acting as if government were a benevolent despot.” (Formani, 2003) Buchanan’s “public choice” theory holds that there is no decision made by an aggregate whole, but rather by the combined choices of individuals. John Meadowcraft writes in a biography of Buchanan that his “work transposes the same rational self-interested individual to a different institutional context: the political realm of politicians, bureaucrats, voters, and taxpayers. (Meadowcroft 2011, 135) Today, Buchanan’s work is promoted at MTSU by Prof. Daniel Smith, director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), who said in an interview that the worldwide impact of free market capitalism and trade extends beyond economics:The decline in global poverty (and global inequality), as well as the rise of political rights, gender rights, literacy, and a whole host of other positive indicators of human well-being, were primarily driven by the adoption of market policies (private property rights, rule of law, limited government, etc.). There is also a robust and consistent cross-sectional relationship between the adoption of these policies and a country’s economic performance (Smith, 2021, qtd. in Myers).Smith doesn’t draw a bright line from the MPS/Chicago School economists to the current world economy, because most of their work pre-dated modern globalization, but he says “certainly, they had an effect.” Specifically, he said Buchanan’s writing was key in changing the prevailing view in the 1940s-70s that “any failure in the market should automatically lead to governmental solutions.” During this period, the policies of John Maynard Keynes dominated U.S. politics as government intervention and massive spending sought to stimulate the economy during downturns, even if it meant running a budget deficit. “For Buchanan this was an incomplete justification for government intervention since they were comparing ideal-theory government versus non-ideal-theory markets,” Smith said.Masters of therecent contribution to the debate is the 2021 book “Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics” by Daniel Jones. It traces neoliberal globalization more directly to the philosophies of Buchanan and MPS economists such as Karl Popper, von Mises, and Hayek. Jones posits that based on their theories, “mature neoliberalism, when it emerged, was much more aggressive in its advocacy of free market models as the solution to all manner of policy problems and compromised much less with mainstream New Deal or Great Society liberalism and social democracy.” (Jones 2021, 87)When the political philosophies of some of the main thinkers—Milton Friedman, Henry Simons, James Buchanan, and George Stigler, as well as Mises and Hayek—are examined, it is possible to situate and define more clearly transatlantic neoliberalism in relation to other political and economic philosophies (Jones 2021, 87).These ideas were embraced by politicians as a “workable set of policies” that supplanted the New Deal and social-democratic political establishments in Britain and the United States. (Jones, 2021, 32) Later, the most influential and well-known of this group was Friedman, whose “supply side economics” theory was adopted by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Jones also sees Buchanan’s public choice as a key part of this movement, calling it an “important convergence” that expanded neoliberal thought into important areas previously overlooked by economists. Buchanan’s work “is therefore also central to any proper understanding of the development of transatlantic neoliberal politics.” (Jones 2021, 89)Neoliberal globalization criticismNeoliberal economics continued its trajectory throughout the 1990s as states emerging from Colonialism and the fall of the Soviet Union sought a pathway to prosperity. In “Readings in Public Choice,” Robert Tollison and co-authors define globalization as “the integration of national markets into global markets” that occurred as multilateral trade liberalization and agreements reduced trade barriers and restrictions on international capital market transactions among developed nations, facilitated by a revolution in international communications. “Trade patterns, which had previously been based on the richer countries trading among themselves and importing raw materials and low-valued goods from poorer countries, changed. (Tollison, 2008, 506) Lloyd Gruber summarizes it this way:Trade allows capital-abundant countries to shift production into capital-intensive sectors and labour-abundant countries to shift into labour intensive sectors and, as a result of these trade facilitated reallocations, improves the efficiency of the world economy as a whole. Each country produces more with less and is thereby made richer (Gruber, 2011, 583).In macroeconomic terms, neoliberal globalization has driven dramatic worldwide economic growth over the past 40 years, according to the World Bank: Gross National Income (GNI) increased from an average of $10,200 to $88,700. Per capita income rose from $2,200 to $11,600. GDP worldwide mostly fluctuated between 2% to 4% with two drops into negative territory—in 2008–09 during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and in 2019–2020 due to COVID-19. Overall, since 1990, more than 1.2 billion people have escaped extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day. (World Bank 2020, 32) Now, 9.5% of the world is in that category, compared to nearly 36% in 1990.Persistent disparity and disarrayDespite this track record, pockets of disparity and inequality and periods of economic disarray abound and are seized upon as evidence that the system is broken. For example, while China’s per capita income rose over the past four decades from $220 to $10,600, Somalia’s only increased from $110 to $310. In addition, global economic shocks like the Debt Crisis of the 1970s and ‘80s, the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of the late 1990s, and the GFC further eroded support for neoliberal globalization. The relative success of hybrid capitalism-communism in China or “dirigisme” in India has offered other policy pathways for developing nations to consider. Concurrently with the neoliberal globalization boom, the percentage of the world living in a democratic form of government is waning. It increased from 25% in 1976 to a high of 57% in 2017, before dropping back below 50% in 2019 in what has been called a “democracy recession.” In November 2021, a survey by Vanderbilt University’s Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) found support for democracy in Latin American countries “dropped 10 percentage points between the 2010 and the 2018-19 survey.” (Lupu et al, 2021) John McKay, co-author of “International Development: Issues and Challenges,” argues that “many of the ideas central to development economics that had been displaced by the neoliberal revolution have now come back into favour.” (137) Caroline Thomas, in “Global Governance, Development and Human Security: Exploring the Links,” calls for increased global government in the name of stopping the material inequality “evident between states, within states, and also between private corporations.”the beginning of the 21st century the globalisation of inequality at the inter-state, intra-state and private company levels seems to be entrenched. This will affect security from the human to the intra-state, inter-state, regional and ultimately global levels (Thomas, 2021, 173).One of neoliberalism’s most formidable critics is Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner and former vice president of research at the World Bank. Stiglitz’s famous jeremiad “Globalization and Its Discontents” gives it some credit for improvements, before calling for a complete overhaul:Unfortunately, we have no world government, accountable to the people of every country, to oversee the globalization process in a fashion comparable to the way national governments guided the nationalization process. Instead, we have a system that might be called global governance without global government in which a few institutions—the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO—and a few players—the finance, commerce, and trade ministries, closely linked to certain financial and commercial interests—dominate the scene, but in which many of those affected by their decisions are left almost voiceless. It’s time to change some of the rules governing the international economic order. (Stiglitz 2003, 21–22).MacLean’s ‘Chains’Along with the wider critique of neoliberalism, Buchanan has been broadsided by accusations that his public choice theory benefits only the rich and elite and even has racist motivation. Lynn Parramore in “Meet the Hidden Architect Behind America’s Racist Economics,” summarizes this based on MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains.” Parramore contends that:If Americans really knew what Buchanan thought and promoted, and how destructively his vision is manifesting under their noses, it would dawn on them how close the country is to a transformation most would not even want to imagine, much less accept (Parramore, 2018).Drawing on MacLean’s work, Parramore chronicles Buchanan’s partnership with Charles Koch, libertarian businessman and political donor, to teach neoliberal principles on campuses. Parramore writes that Koch preferred Buchanan to Friedman’s “Chicago boys” because they wanted “to make government work more efficiently when the true libertarian should be tearing it out at the root.”[Buchanan] was deeply involved in efforts to cut taxes on the wealthy in 1970s and 1980s and he advised proponents of Reagan Revolution in their quest to unleash markets and posit government as the “problem” rather than the “solution.” The Koch-funded Virginia school coached scholars, lawyers, politicians, and business-people to apply stark right-wing perspectives on everything from deficits to taxes to school privatization (Parramore, 2018).MacLean focused much of her book on Buchanan, accusing him of supporting segregation under the guise of promoting individualism and states’ rights. She alleges that Buchanan, while at UVA in the late 1950s, worked to undermine the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that called for dismantling segregation in the public schools.James McGill Buchanan was not a member of the Virginia elite. Nor is there any explicit evidence to suggest that for a white southerner of his day, he was uniquely racist or insensitive to the concept of equal treatment. And yet, somehow, all he saw in the Brown decision was coercion. And not just in the abstract. What the court ruling represented to him was personal. Northern liberals—the very people who looked down upon southern whites like him, he was sure—were now going to tell his people how to run their society (MacLean 2017, xvi).MacLean calls Buchanan a “foot soldier of the right,” promoting theories that favored the rich and undermined democracy. MacLean concludes he helped start a movement “pushed by relatively small numbers of radical right billionaires and millionaires who have become profoundly hostile to America’s modern system of government … working to undermine the normal governance of democracy” (MacLean 2017,ProtestedSmith arrived at MTSU in 2018, just after MacLean’s book was released to great fanfare on the American Left. He came from GMU, where he interacted with Buchanan and wrote a dissertation under a committee comprised of Buchanan’s former students and co-authors. At MTSU, Smith was greeted with shouting protestors during a faculty gathering when he was introduced as director of PERI, which had been established in 2016 with support from Koch. Smith wrote in a March 2021 article published by PERI that “Democracy in Chains” is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of public choice economics:Buchanan’s research program is a serious attempt to preserve democratic institutions through the design and enforcement of constitutions to protect minority groups from discriminatory policy. Importantly, Buchanan argues that constitutional safeguards should be designed to be operative even when politicians act with selfish motives. As Buchanan (with co-author Gordon Tullock) writes in the Calculus of Consent “We are not, in any way, glorifying the pursuit of self- or group interest by political means” (Smith, 2021, qtd. in Myers interview).Smith said the corrupting influence of elites is the main reason public choice economists are concerned with limiting the size and scope of government: “The very politicians commonly elected to represent the people, for instance, are overwhelmingly wealthy elites.” He said other academics at MTSU receive grants from external sources such as the liberal George Soros Foundation: “The vast majority of funding in higher education, both public and private, goes to scholars on the Left.”Buchanan and segregationIn “James M. Buchanan and the Political Economy of Desegregation,” Phillip Magness and co-authors counter that MacLean’s premise is “wholly implausible.” Buchanan and his Chicago School colleagues were more interested in larger issues of economics and politics and sought to avoid politics and activism:Buchanan’s work is better understood in the context of his Chicago school mentor Frank Knight as well as his own support for the public choice contributions of W.H. Hutt, rather than the unattested links to southern racial conservatism that are posited by MacLean. To the contrary, we show that Buchanan opposed segregation (Magness et al 2017, 1).They write that Buchanan only addressed racial issues a few times in his 60-year academic career, yet “his references to race generally criticize discrimination, including segregation.” (6) For example, in a 1968 essay, Buchanan wrote that “(t)he local [segregation] statutes that were violated by the restaurant sit-ins of the early 1960’s were ‘Southern’ laws, of course, and properly and universally condemned as ‘unjust’.” Buchanan arrived at UVA in 1956, after the initial political backlash against the Brown decision. Virginia was a civil rights battleground after Democrat U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd called for “Massive Resistance” to the decision. Some of MacLean’s criticism focuses on Buchanan’s support for a voucher system and opposition to some plans for forced integration, which she construed as supportive of segregation, they write. Ultimately, Buchanan and philosophical allies “opposed coercive segregation, and their criticisms of some integration plans was likely an oblique reference to their procedural misgivings about executive edicts. This was a common theme of Buchanan’s constitutional theory irrespective of racial issues.” (Magness et al 2017, 26) Magness and co-authors chronicle how Buchanan’s mentor, Knight, was invited to give a speech at UVA criticizing segregation and asked Buchanan if it would spark a racist backlash. Buchanan reassured Knight that there were a range of opinions at the university and “there should be no cause for concern,” so Knight went ahead with the speech that “harshly criticized segregation from the platform that Buchanan provided him” (Magness et al 2017, 21–22).‘Greed is Good’?Perhaps surprising to his critics, Buchanan was not religious or a political conservative. Buchanan acknowledged “the public’s image of me, and especially as developed through the media after the Nobel Prize in 1986, is that of a right-wing libertarian zealot who is anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and anti-scientific. I am, of course, none of these and am, indeed, the opposites.” (Formani, 2003) Buchanan described himself as a classical liberal except that he rejected the perfectibility of mankind:This doesn’t mean people don’t do unselfish things, such as running into a burning house to save someone. It does say, however, that the hotter the fire and the greater the risk, the less likely someone is to save someone from a burning house. Buchanan recognized that taking the incentives produced by institutions into consideration in the design of institutions was really important (Smith, 2021).Jones writes that Buchanan’s public choice theory is easily mischaracterized because it depends on people operating “according to their own interests to maximize their utility.” (Jones 2021, 113) Friedman argued that the classical liberal views people as imperfect and sees the goal of social organization as “preventing ‘bad’ people from doing harm and enabling ‘good’ people to do good …. of course, “bad” and “good” people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them” (Jones 2021,neoliberal conception of man as purely selfish is a caricature, though this was often the second-hand interpretation of their ideas which came later, as, for example, in the “greed is good” culture famously depicted in Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street. For Hayek and Friedman, men might be good and bad (Jones 2021, 113).That is why Buchanan emphasized that constitutions “channel the self-serving behaviour of participants towards the common good in a manner that comes as close as possible to that described by Adam Smith with respect to the economic order” (Jones, 115).Doux-Commerce and the Invisible HandPERI hosts conferences on Buchanan’s scholarship, developed a Ph.D. field in public choice economics, and provides funding to doctoral students interested in political economy. Prof. Smith and his network draw inspiration from 18th Century Scottish Enlightenment writers such as David Hume, Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith. For example, Prof. Smith and collaborator Peter Boettke of George Mason University tout a principle called “doux-commerce,” which holds that the spread of trade and commerce decreases violence:Rather than attempting to perfect man, (Adam) Smith argued that the market institutional environment would best harness man’s nature to realize social order. Even where reason failed, man’s passions could entice him to participate in socializing institutions. While John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Thomas Aquinas made some of the first defenses of a commercial society based upon moral justifications, the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers advanced the claim that not only could commerce be moral, but that it was moralizing (Boettke and Smith, 2014).Another avenue of counter-attack is revisiting Hayek’s “Uncertainty Principle.” Jones writes that Hayek’s view of the impossibility of effective central planning “stemmed directly from a limited view of human capacities—it was impossible for people to hold all the information necessary to make rational decisions on behalf of everyone.” (Jones 2021, 60) Instead, for neoliberals it is the “Invisible Hand” of millions of individual decisions that produces economic benefits. Yet the same public choice principle that benefits society at-large can be dangerous in politics, where it becomes concentrated in fewer people with increased authority. “Again, invoking the invisible hand, Friedman argued that where markets operated to generate the greater good despite the individual intentions of market actors, the situation in politics was reversed,” Jones writes. “The invisible hand at work in political life had a malevolent influence as the noble intentions of interventionists produced terrible outcomes.” (Jones, 2021, 109) That warning is expanded in a paper written by Prof. Peter T. Leeson of West Virginia University, another of Prof. Smith’s frequent co-authors and a MPS member. Leeson draws upon Buchanan’s theory to specifically answer the question, “Does Globalization Require Global Government?”The size of such a world-encompassing state would leave most voters so far removed from their public representatives … that voters would be unable to effectively monitor the behavior of these representatives. This would (a) decrease voters’ ability to hold unscrupulous politicians unaccountable, and (b) encourage political agents who are aware of this to engage in additional unscrupulous behavior (Leeson, 2007, 8–9).Israeli neoliberal economist Arye Hillman argues that the worst inequality is in poorer countries where the political elites rule. “The opponents of globalization have an agenda that blames poverty in poor countries on open world markets, rather than calling for change in the behavior of political elites in poorer countries who sustain poverty by failing to use aid resources to improve living conditions of the general population. (Hillman 2008, 506) Smith contends that neoliberal economists such as Buchanan never advocated for a “perfectly free market” and even supported some government programs as safety nets. “They did share a concern, theoretically and empirically informed, that government programs and regulation could be, and often were, captured by special interest groups to the detriment of the welfare of regular citizens,” SmithsupportIn this debate, quantifiable research also is used to firm up neoliberalism’s foundations. As an example, Smith points to a 2021 Grier and Grier study of the impact of the Washington Consensus. The authors identify 49 cases of nations adopting “generalized, sustained” Washington Consensus-style reforms in a sample of 141 countries from 1970-2015 and found the “average treatment effect associated with these reforms is positive, sizeable, and significant.” (Grier and Grier 2021, 69) Specifically, over a 5-year period they found growth is 2.07 to 2.87 percentage points higher in those countries compared to their matched controls. Over a 10-year period, they found a 1.03–1.93 percentage point increase compared to the counterfactual group.Assuming an initial per-capita income of $6,000 and a baseline growth rate of 2%, a 5-year treatment effect … would leave a country 13% richer than it otherwise would have been (per-capita income after 5 years of $7,481 with the treatment as opposed to $6,624 in the baseline case). Assuming the same baseline, a 10-year treatment effect … leaves the treated country 16% richer than it would have been under the baseline (per-capita income after 10 years of $8,496 with the treatment versus $7,314 in the baseline scenario). Our results show that an investment in economic freedom can pay substantial dividends over the short to medium run (Grier and Grier 2021, 65).Ultimately, however, the origins of neoliberalism were ideational, emerging after World War II as its founders’ response to the devastating authoritarian excesses of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, and well-intentioned but misguided policies of Keynesianism. Smith believes it is an idea that still has power to persuade and prosper after 75 years:There is no reason to think that there is one community which will serve as an ideal for all people. Is there really one kind of society that would be ideal or utopia for each of us? It’s not because we are morally flawed, it’s because we are different. Utopia should be a collection of utopias, and only capitalism would allow this diversity to emerge … and the wealth to enjoy it (Smith, 2021, Myers Interview). |
| https://www.e-ir.info/2021/12/28/my-order-my-rules-china-and-the-american-rules-based-order-in-historical-perspective/ | ‘My Order, My Rules’: China and the American Rules-Based Order in Historical Perspective | William M. Zolinger Fujii | 0 | Much has been written about the crisis of the liberal international order, with International Relations (IR) scholars, policy experts, politicians, and the press expressing a growing interest in the topic over the past years. The causes of the perceived retreat of the system are seen to come from domestic and external sources, in particular, the deepening contradictions generated by neoliberal capitalist globalisation in the core liberal democracies and a shifting global distribution of material power, respectively. The international dimension of the crisis is being chiefly manifested by the rise of China and the emergence of a development model that rejects liberal democracy and market capitalism, which had been widely seen as important requirements for development in the post-1989 era – in fact, political liberalisation in parts of East Asia, Latin America, and countries of the former Eastern bloc in Europe was partially driven by the belief in the premise that economic development and democratisation were two sides of the same coin. In the light of China’s increasing material capabilities and diplomatic assertiveness, observers have warned against Beijing’s revisionist intentions that are seen to represent challenges to the liberal international order (Ikenberry and Funabashi, 2020; Jan and Melnick, 2020; Lee et al., 2020; Mearsheimer, 2019; Söderbaum et al., 2021).Considering that most states in East Asia – used here in its broad sense that includes Northeast and Southeast Asia – are not liberal democracies, and given the fact that the effects of China’s ascension are having their greatest impact in the region (Weiss and Wallace, 2021), the use of the term ‘rules-based order’ seems to be more appropriate for being less politically charged. After all, only Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan – regardless of how its sovereignty is viewed – are liberal democracies (V-Dem, 2020), while Mongolia and Timor-Leste are considered electoral democracies under free regimes (Freedom House, 2021). This seems to be the perception of the US and its key allies, which have shifted their emphasis from the liberal international order to a rules-based order when defending the maintenance of the status quo vis-à-vis, though not always directly, China (G7, 2021).However, unlike international law, which has clearly defined sources and comes into force after formal processes of signature and ratification of treaties by states that are at least nominally sovereign, rules-based is a rather ambiguous concept that raises some questions. Who decides which rules constitute the gold standard according to which the order should operate? When and how is the degree of compliance measured? What is the geographical applicability of those rules? While these questions demand specific enquiries in their own right, this article examines China’s current challenge to the US’ dominant position in East Asia in light of Washington’s contestations of European pre-eminence in Latin America in the nineteenth century, and defence of its hegemonic position in the twentieth.China and East Asia, the United States and the AmericasThe similarities between the process through which the US established its hemispheric dominance and the Chinese quest to become a regional hegemon in East Asia must not be exaggerated; not only are the two regions and historical contexts vastly different, but also China’s path towards that goal is in its very early stages, rendering it impossible to be meaningfully compared to that of the United States. This notwithstanding, the patterns of Beijing’s contestations of Washington’s position in East Asia find certain parallels with the US’ challenges to European ambitions in a region it regarded as its natural ‘sphere of influence’ in the nineteenth century. If the US leadership believed their country had the divine right to establish itself as a hemispheric hegemon, the Chinese can be seen as regarding China’s regional leadership as some sort of a historical right (Bandeira, 2005; Zhao,‘hiding its capabilities and biding its time’ for more than three decades, China has increasingly shown clearer intentions to reshape the current order at least partially (Feng and He, 2017; Tang, 2018). While the 2008 global financial crisis had demonstrated the weakness of US-led neoliberal capitalism, the 2016 Brexit and Donald Trump’s election were seen in Beijing as signs of retraction of the Anglo-American core from the liberal internationalism on which the US-led rules-based order had been built (Doshi, 2021). But what exactly is the rules-based international order? Although its usage has become widespread only in recent years, the term was first coined in the 1990s (Scott, 2021), when the United States enjoyed unchallenged economic, military, and techno-scientific supremacy, and exercised unrivalled ideological attraction worldwide. At its ideational core, the concept reflects the values embedded in the twin sisters of liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism, the pillars of the liberal hegemony that had heralded the ‘end of history’ in the late 1980s-early 1990s period. In more practical terms, economically, these translated into liberalising policy prescriptions conceived under the Washington Consensus umbrella, while politically one expression was electoral democratic regimes consistent with the strategic interests of the United States and its OECD-Development Assistance Committee’s allies (Bridoux and Kurki, 2014; Markakis, 2016; Robinson, 1996).The United States’ rise to hemispheric dominanceDespite the substantial academic and political attention that the crisis of the liberal international order has attracted over the past decade, Latin America and the Caribbean have been largely ignored by mainstream IR literature in the English language (Long, 2018). In part, this is due to the region’s relatively low geopolitical relevance – itself resulting from the absence of a potential regional rival to the US as well as of an external power with significant influence in the region – and Washington’s hemispheric hegemony. The fact that the effects of the rise of China and the relative resurgence of Russia are negligible in a nuclear-free Latin America further reduces its relevance in the debate on the crisis of the liberal international order, although Chinese economic and political influence in the region has grown enormously in the past two decades (Chen, 2021; Noesselt and Soliz-Landivar, 2013; Pini, 2015; Vadell, 2011) At the same time, as John Mearsheimer (2010) notes, the Western Hemisphere is the most important region for the US due to its geographical proximity, having thus greater potential strategic relevance than any other area on the globe.Indeed, the very historical process of the United States’ emergence as a great world power is indissociable from its quest to become a dominant state in its region first, which is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for a country to become a global power. Seen in this way, China’s intentions to replace the US as East Asia’s hegemon are not particularly abnormal, but rather in line with patterns of behaviour of rising world powers. As the ‘strategic backwater’ of the very superpower in whose image the current order was made, and with that status appearing secure for the foreseeable future, there seems to be little reason for the current debate on contestations of the US-led global order to pay greater attention to the region. Such a tendency, however, may overestimate the extent to which Latin American states accept the current order (Long, 2018), while simultaneously obscuring important intraregional contestations of and contributions to that system, such as the principle of non-intervention, which was largely the result of the region’s jurists’ reaction to US and European interventions in the region (Orford, 2021; Vargas, 2005). Equally importantly, the region is closely linked to the process through which the US became a dominant power in East Asia in 1945, forty-seven years after it acquired a territorial base in the region after defeating a declining Spain in the lateforeign policy foundation of US hemispheric ambitions was laid by the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which formalised Washington’s stance towards the European powers’ interests in the Americas, although its rationale was originally isolationist rather than expansionist (Campos, 2014; Modeste, 2020). At a time when new sovereign states were emerging throughout Ibero-America, US leaders feared a reaction from European monarchies that had been reorganised since the 1815 Congress of Vienna, which had given birth to a new, post-Napoleonic international order. Seeking to keep Europe’s perceived neocolonial ambitions at bay, US President James Monroe declared that the United States would oppose any European attempt to recolonise the Americas while accepting the existing situation as of 1823 (Bandeira, 2005). Seen from the perspective of the 1815 international order, the United States was a revisionist power. Yet, given Washington’s lack of capabilities to enforce it, the doctrine amounted to little more than a declaration of intentions instead of representing an effective policy. The world’s greatest power at the time, Britain initially welcomed the initiative because it too opposed the recolonisation of Latin America, where British capital and trade already held a dominant position without the need for direct territorial control. In that very particular sense, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2014 declaration that Asian affairs and problems should be run and solved by Asians rather than by external powers (Doshi, 2021) resembles President James Monroe’s statement made two centuries earlierBy the mid-1840s, British concerns had grown at the prospect of the US becoming a dominant hemispheric power, which led London to consider the extension of the balance of power concept to the Western Hemisphere (Murphy, 2005). Britain’s maritime dominance meant that while it acquiesced to the precepts of the Monroe Doctrine when these were directed against other European powers, it would ignore them when British interests were at stake, such as when London annexed the Malvinas Islands in 1833 or blockaded the River Plate in the 1845-1850 period. In spite of that, Britain’s aspirations failed to materialise, and by the end of 1848, the US had incorporated the Oregon Territory and annexed half of the Mexican land that corresponded to one-third of American territory (Langley, 2019). Hostile to European influence and interference, US president James Polk reaffirmed the principles of the Monroe Doctrine and gave it a more expansionist character consistent with the territorial expansion that the United States was undergoing in the 1840s. This period represented the beginning of the second wave of US imperial expansion that lasted between the late 1840s and 1870, during which Washington conducted twenty-four military interventions or annexations across the Americas (Go, 2011), up from sixteen in the first wave (1810-1825).The Venezuelan crisis of 1902-1903, which saw the naval blockade of that country by Britain, Germany, and Italy with the purpose of collecting debt, further influenced the United States’ policy towards European intervention in the Americas. Although the US did not intervene militarily on the grounds that the Monroe Doctrine applied only to territorial seizures, it did eventually pressure the European powers to back down and reach a compromise. As a result of the event, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was announced in 1904 (Smith, 2005), according to which the US would be forced to intervene in Latin American countries to act as an international policy power (Renehan, 2007) when necessary. The United States’ position towards external interference in its region grew bolder proportionally to its national strength (Bandeira, 2005). Having a GDP that was much smaller than Britain’s in the 1820s, by the turn of the century the American economy had long overtaken the British in its overall size and was producing twice as much iron and steel (Kennedy, 1989). A small force in the 1890s, the US Navy had grown to the world’s second largest in 1907 (O’Brien, 1998), swiftly winning the 1898 Spanish-American War and establishing a territorial base in East Asia with the acquisition of Guam and the Philippines as a result.This event, which represented both Washington’s efforts to consolidate its dominance in the Americas and ambitions to expand across the Pacific, made the United States an East Asian power for the first time in a historical moment when a weakened China was being carved up by European and Japanese imperialism. Having secured its position as a hemispheric hegemon, the US embarked upon informal imperial expansion in East Asia that drove it to compete with the colonial powers of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia. As a latecomer to the imperialist race in China, Washington feared these powers may formally partition the Chinese territory or restrict trade in their respective formal spheres of influence, which would negatively impact on American commercial interests (Bandeira, 2005; Go, 2011; Paul, 2012). The United States acted by declaring the Open Door Policy in 1899, which held a certain resemblance to the Monroe Doctrine insofar as it manifested US opposition to any territorial seizure in China by any power. Less than eight decades after the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine, and only 123 years after its independence from British rule, the US had become a major player in East Asian affairs and was exhorting other imperial powers to respect China’s territorial integrity with the purpose of ensuring American access to the Chinese market.Rules-based order as the US-centric statusto Chinese estimates, China may significantly exceed the United States in economic, military, and technological capabilities in the next thirty years, thus concluding the goal of national rejuvenation and becoming the world’s greatest power by 2049 (Doshi, 2021), one century after the founding of the PRC. Not unlike the United States of the past – and virtually any ascending global power, for that matter – China wishes to become a dominant force in its own region, which necessarily entails replacing the state that has played that role since the mid-1940s. Increasingly more outspoken about its strategic goals, Beijing now shows greater willingness to challenge Washington’s dominance in East Asia (Lee et. al., 2020; Maçães, 2018; Wallace and Weiss, 2021; Wang, 2021). In this context, Chinese actions and discourse are almost by definition against the established international order, while the United States is the chief defender of the rules that constitute that very system in the region and beyond, such as the wider Indo-Pacific space.Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, Washington’s support for the global order has been far from that of an unequivocal and staunch supporter, as it has refused to participate in several international issue-specific frameworks, violated international law, and acted in ways that contradict its own discourse on many occasions (Bandeira, 2005; Hoganson and Sexton, 2020; Paul, 2012; Petras, 2020; Smith, 2005). In its region alone, the United States has never joined the hemispheric human rights regime that was established in the late 1960s, and intervened either directly or indirectly in at least thirteen countries in order to effect regime change since the UN Charter entered into force in October 1945 (Carbone and Mastrángelo, 2019; Livingstone, 2009; McPherson, 2016), thus violating the foundational treaty of the central international organisation of the very US-led system. As Stephen Walt has observed, the United States is willing to ignore, evade, or rewrite the rules whenever they seem inconvenient, noting that ‘Washington sometimes thinks it is perfectly okay for might to make right and for winners to take all’ (Walt, 2021). The United States’ mixed results notwithstanding, mainstream Western liberal narrative (e.g., Keohane, 1984; Kupchan, 1998; Ikenbery, 2001; Ikenberry and Funabashi, 2020) tend to attribute to the chief engineer of the system the greatest interest and stake in upholding its rules, which makes Washington’s violations less salient than those committed by an openly revisionist illiberal power like China. This cements the perception in liberal democracies that Beijing is acting against the rules-based order, while those rules are typically framed within the ideological, material, and normative interests of the United States (Chan, 2021; Parmar, 2018).Moreover, international order is not a monolithic notion but encompasses a multitude of regimes that constitute and regulate the interactions among states on the world stage. An operationalisation of the concept is proposed by Johnston (2019), who identifies eight orders within the current international system, which are: constitutive, military, political development, social development, trade, financial, environmental, and information. Out of the eight, China shows a moderate to high degree of support to six while contesting the political and social development regimes, as they encompass issues of human rights and political values which Beijing explicitly reject. For its part, the US opposes several rights frameworks that China supports, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Johnston, 2019), and Protocols I and II to the Geneva Convention (International Committee of the Red Cross, 1977). Regarding the military order, Beijing has been a supporter of key norms and organisations that regulate security-related matters (Chan, 2021; Fung, 2019; Johnston, 2019), such as non-aggression and the UN Security Council, having refused to recognise both Kosovo’s independence (Fung, 2019) and Russia’s annexation of Crimea (Zhang, 2015). Since US military hegemony is obviously neither a norm nor a rule, China’s strident opposition to it does not constitute violations of international law, nor are they infringements upon the rules-based order, however it is defined.Nevertheless, as its national strength grows, Beijing under Xi Jinping has shown increasing willingness to challenge certain aspects of the international order despite its active and constructive support for others. One such case is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which China has ignored in its expansion into the South China Sea (Chan, 2021; Maçães, 2018; Satake and Sahashi, 2021), where it has rejected a 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling in favour of the Philippines. While the Southeast Asian countries tend to interpret a rules-based order differently from the US and its liberal democratic allies, this case represents an instance where there is a growing consensus that China is transgressing the limits of that order in the specific context of the South China Sea dispute (ASEAN, 2021) despite the fact that the US itself has never ratified the convention, although it has come to accept it as customary international law.Unsurprisingly, these patterns of Beijing’s behaviour show similarities to those of the US inasmuch as both countries maintain expansionist foreign policies driven by hegemonic aspirations in areas far beyond their borders (Dogan, 2021; Doshi, 2021; Maçães, 2018; Orford, 2021; Petras, 2020; Zhang, 2015). While deep differences exist in regard to their respective views on and positions in the global and East Asian orders, ultimately, the degree to which China and the United States comply with international law, norms, and rules largely depend on their geopolitical and geoeconomics interests. To be sure, most great powers can be said to behave in similar ways, with the difference being that of degree rather than substance. During the negotiation process of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, for instance, Britain successfully defended its right to wage war over certain regions in which it held special interests, a ‘British Monroe Doctrine’ (Shinohara, 2012; United States, 2021), while it diligently opposed Japan’s similar justifications when Tokyo invaded Manchuria three yearsthe two greatest powers in the globe engaged in an emerging superpower competition, the US and China epitomise that line of conduct today, with the Monroe and ‘Xi’ doctrines being central components of these powers’ international strategies. The former is adjusted unilaterally based on the enemy of the day, such as when the ‘Kennan Corollary’ provided the rationale and justification for numerous US interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean against socialism and communism from the 1950s to the 1980s (Bandeira, 2005; McPherson, 2016; Modeste, 2020), while the latter is practically translated into China’s non-negotiable core interests that are redefined and broadened as Beijing’s national power increases (Doshi, 2021; Shi, 2021; Wirth, 2019). The mixed results as a complier of the international order may bring greater discomfort for the United States because it has long been the chief underwriter of the system, whereas China could be relatively less uncomfortable with its own inconsistent patterns of compliance to the extent that it openly questions many of the rules that were established without its participation in the first place. This may change in the future if China succeeds in rewriting the international rules and establishing itself as the principal shaper of the order, which it has been actively pursuing in its quest to erode the US-led system and at least partially replace it.ConclusionBy and large, the rules-based order defended by the US is a construct that reflects its interests and worldview. Having contested the international system of 1815 as a relatively small revisionist power, the United States gradually expanded and consolidated its hemispheric dominance. In doing so, Washington partially acted against prevailing rules while it advocated a rationale for its own imperial expansion across the Americas and Asia. Once established as a major world player, the United States sought greater influence on the international system that better reflected the global distribution of material power, eventually rising as the principal architect of the global order despite periods of isolationism.Faced with an increasingly bold China that openly calls for the revision of the current system today, the US has come to emphasise the maintenance of a rules-based order as a less politically charged substitute for what it essentially sees as American rules and order. The emphatic discourse as a defender of a rules-based order, however, invites scrutiny of the United States’ own track record as an upholder of those rules, which, in turn, reveal rather questionable patterns of behaviour. Fundamentally, despite the consistent rhetoric, Washington’s concrete actions appear hardly different from those of Beijing as far as compliance with international institutions, law, norms, and rules – whatever their definition – is concerned; as such, complying with a rules-based order often implies acting in accordance with what the US regards as acceptable and in conformity with the rules recognised by Washington. Looking at China’s behaviour and discourse, there is little reason to believe that the PRC would act much differently from the US should it one day become the world’s pre-eminent power and principal rules-maker. Not unlike a US-led order whose script is selectively followed by Washington, a Beijing-led international system may well lead to the emergence of a rules-based order with ‘Chinese characteristics’ wherein, in the end, the rules of the game continue to be primarily defined by the chief patron of the system according to its national interests. |
5.5 Writing our corpus
A collection of documents is usually referred to as a corpus. This is what we have created today, so the final step will be to save it into our working director. Below we use the function write_csv() from the readr package (included in the tidyverse) to write a .csv file with UTF-8 encoding.
Hint, try using the node
.h--metaand functions from thestringrpackage likestr_extract()in the%>%pipeline.↩︎