The early 18th century saw the beginnings of Russian military occupation of Poland, followed by a secret agreement by the neighboring countries, meant to maintain a political status quo in the internal affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then, the dynamics of the economic transformations of the European continent led to a permanent economic deadlock, particularly in the regions with large agricultural areas, such as Poland. Five years from the turn of the 18th century the Polish polity disappeared from (...) the map of Europe for 123 years. Analyzing the relationships and causes of a number of phenomena related to Old Poland is made all the more difficult by some historical processes which blow some ritual events of limited importance out of proportion, such as theadoption of the Constitution of 3 May ; these also glorify the past of the society and the state as a “golden myth” of social harmony in relationships obtaining within the classes and between them. (shrink)

The U.S. military has now occupied Iraq for more than five years. This is a long time for one state to impose a military occupation on another. But of course the American occupation of Iraq seems almost momentary by comparison with Israel’s fortyone-year occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Considering how controversial both these occupations have been, one would expect them to have elicited a substantial body of thought about the moral (...) dimensions of the practice of occupation. But such an expectation would be disappointed. There is, of course, a body of law governing the practice of occupation, but the moral foundations of that law have suffered the same neglect by moral and political theorists that the practice of occupation itself has. As I prepared my remarks for the conference from which this symposium issue is derived, I was surprised to be unable to recall having read or even seen any philosophical discussions of occupation. I own most of the books that have been written on the theory of the just war over the past half century or so, but a search through their indexes turned up only a few entries on occupation, none of which proved, on investigation, to offer significant illumination. I have not, however, had to conjure up a theory de novo. Occupation involves both the threat of military force and, usually, the use of military force; hence it is akin to, and indeed often overlaps with, war (as the alternating references to the occupation of Iraq and the war in Iraq attest). There should therefore be continuities between the morality of war and the morality of.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article provides a normative appraisal of the law of military occupation by looking into occupation courts and their legitimacy. It focuses on two cornerstones of the current regulation of war: the principle of equality of belligerents, that is, the potential relevance ofjus ad bellumconsiderations on thein bellorights of occupants, and the normative force of the traditional distinction between states and non-state armed groups, specially in conflicts not of an international character. Against the currently predominant neoclassical position (...) in just war theory, it argues in favor of the moral equality of just and unjust occupants. Against the orthodox position in international law, it advocates the symmetrical treatment of states and non-state actors fighting internal armed conflicts, at least in terms of the rights they may claim on the territories under their control. It concludes by appraising the way in which this moral landscape should be translated into legal norms. (shrink)

In this article, I trace ‘re-membering’ as a feminist practice in the context of gendered activism under military occupation in Kashmir. Drawing on its anticolonial feminist roots, I conceptualise re-membering as practices that do not simply put together what has been severed or dismembered by coloniality but they also, in doing so, propose different frames of looking. I think through re-membering by focusing on two intertwining sites of gendered and feminist activism in Kashmir: protests that re-member the disappeared (...) and activist representation under military occupation. A feminist analysis of these activist strategies grounded in anticolonial thinking suggests that re-membering in the specificity of its emergence under conditions of heightened control does multivalent work: it contests dominant claims and the coloniality of the Indian state, thereby exposing the continuum of violence including its carceral, psychic, discursive forms that co-constitute and perpetuate the occupation of Kashmir. As such, it insists on accounting for historical and contextual specificities as necessary conditions for imagining an expressly anticolonial feminist politics that can open possibilities of epistemic and political transformation towards knowing Kashmir and people’s struggles differently. It is here that the epistemic potential of re-membering lies: in overturning the terms of conversation as decolonial feminist scholarship has long insisted. (shrink)

이 글은 한국현대사에서 가장 큰 비중을 차지했던 이승만의 자유주의에 대한 인식을 미군정기를 중심으로 고찰했다. 이승만은 미국 선교사가 세운 배재학당에서 입학하여 기독교와 미국식 근대 교육을 습득했고, 그 후로도 그들의 도움으로 투옥중임에도 독서와 집필을 할 수 있었으며 미국 유학을 통해 박사학위를 취득할 수 있었다. 이런 경험은 그가 전면적으로 미국식 사고방식을 수용하고 비판적 인식 없이 미국을 신뢰하게 만든 계기였다. 그의 독립운동방략인 외교론이 자력이 아닌 미국에 완전히 의존하는 논리라는 점은 그가 얼마나 미국을 신뢰했는지를 잘 보여준다. 자유민주주의와 관련하여 이승만은 미국식 민주주의를 독립한국의 정치체제로 도입하고 사상, (...) 언론, 출판의 보호 등 자유주의가 전제하는 개인의 기본권을 수용했다. 그러나 그는 개인을 우선하는 미국식의 개인주의를 비판하고 개인의 자유에 앞서 국가의 자주독립을 더 강조했다. 또한 경제부문에서도 미국식 자유주의와 달리 공익산업기관의 국유화와 상업의 정부검열 등 주장했다. 이러한 차이는 식민지의 경험과 혼란스러웠던 해방 직후의 상황에 기인한 것이었다. 이승만은 공산주의를 자유민주주의의 대립항으로 설정하고 강력한 반공주의를 내세웠다. 그는 루즈벨트 행정부의 대소 유화정책을 비판하고 군부 및 미군정과 같은 미국의 강경 반공세력과 보조를 맞추었다. 그의 반소반공 인식은 냉전이 격화되면서 정당성을 얻게 되었다. 미군정기 이승만에게 가장 중요한 과제는 공산주의의 침투를 방어하고 통일 국가를 수립하는 일이었다. 그에게 자유민주주의는 중요한 원리였지만 반공을 위해서라면 포기 또는 유보할 수 있는 원리였다. 따라서 자유주의에 대한 그의 인식은 반공에 종속된 자유주의, 곧 ‘반공적 자유주의’라고 말할 수 있다. 결국 반공적 자유주의가 미군정기 한국 자유주의를 대표하지는 않았지만 당시 한국 자유주의에서 가장 핵심적인 측면이었다. (shrink)

Introduction. Taking the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army of 1941—1945 as an example the authors identify features of the personnel selection in the army during military operations, conditions, requirements, criteria, qualities necessary for promotion to higher command positions. The aim of the study is to identify the mechanism of personnel selection in the armed forces during military operations. Methods. The authors use the following general scientific methods: modeling, structural and functional, systemic and comparative analysis; movement from the abstract (...) to the concrete and from the concrete to the abstract. The authors make use of P.A. Sorokin’s theory of vertical mobility. For further research of the problem, the methodology of synergetics and counterfactual modeling of the past can be involved. Scientific novelty of the research. The following existing concepts of the Red Army officers’ dynamics in 1941—1945 are generalized: positive, negative, moral and psychological selection. Their basic concepts and shortcomings are revealed. An initiativeintellectual concept of the officers’ selection in war is formulated on the basis of P. Sorokin’s theory of vertical mobility. The author identify specific conditions, requirements, and criteria influencing the selection of commanders during the war. Results. A clear opposition to the conditions, requirements and selection criteria in peacetime and wartime is given. The following specific criteria for selecting officers of the Red Army during the war are highlighted: the presence of combat experience; non-conformism; the ability to take personal responsibility; analyze and correct errors; nonstandard thinking. Military action creates specific conditions that give rise to the selection criteria for commanders. Conclusions. The selection criteria for personnel in peacetime and wartime armies differ sharply. At the beginning of battle actions, stereotyped commanders prevailed. Such people are replaced by commanders who are able to go beyond the established canons, orders of the chiefs. The work presents a diagram showing the stages of selecting officers in a war: military actions — conditions — selection criteria - requirements — new qualities of a person adapted to combat operations. This leads to the success of military operations, and, consequently, to the promotion of officers in rank and position. (shrink)

The armed forces of World War II employed unprecedented numbers of mechanical transport vehicles, precipitating a spike in demand for automotive manufactures. Eager to capture a share of the less certain postwar automobile marketplace, defense contractors such as Willys-Overland pursued a diverse range of product development and advertising strategies, based on the foundation of their military output. This article considers the cultural significance of Willys-Overland’s 1/4-ton truck (“jeep”), one of the most widely recognized transport artifacts of World War II. (...) Working from a Canadian perspective, the discussion traces the jeep’s transformation from a versatile front line utility truck into an enduring icon of the postwar auto age. (shrink)

Traditions of War brings together developments in political and legal thought, the conduct of military occupations, and the attempts by the international community to regulate the treatment of civilians within this aspect of warfare.

In many countries the military still threatens to punish personnel that disobey orders for the sake of self‐preservation. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) in the U.S., for instance, makes it a crime for a soldier to refuse a directive from a superior unless what that order requires is “patently unlawful”. This qualification is usually interpreted narrowly to cover orders to commit war crimes or to victimize civilians, not orders that would require sacrifice of life or limb. (...) In other words, soldiers are afforded some right of conscientious disobedience, but no right of non‐conscientious, self‐regarding disobedience.We would not think it morally justifiable for any civilian employer to demand and enforce obedience unto death. In most countries it is not legally justifiable, either. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970), for instance, grants workers a right to disobey an instruction and request an official workplace inspection if ever ever they believe that an “imminent danger” exists, where this is defined in terms of a reasonable expectation “of death or serious physical harm.” 5 The Act protects employees who exercise this right from discharge or retaliation. If it is not permissible for civilian employers to enforce compliance with such “imminently dangerous” directives, then why is it permissible for the military? This paper consider a number of possible responses to this question. (shrink)

Soldiering has traditionally been thought of as something radically different from a job or career, but things are changing. Sociologists have observed an “occupational shift” in military service....

So far, most of the philosophical literature on occupations has tried to assess the legitimacy of military rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts by exclusively employing the theoretical resources of just war theory. In this paper, I argue that this approach is mistaken. Occupations occur during or in the aftermath of wars but they are fundamentally a specific type of rule over persons. Thus, theories of political legitimacy should be at least as relevant as just war theory for (...) the moral evaluation of occupations. This paper, therefore, draws on both traditions and argues that just war theory plays a limited role in identifying the purposes and appropriate agents of occupation authority, but that theories of legitimacy are necessary for explaining why and under which conditions foreign actors have the right to rule in the aftermath of armed conflicts. (shrink)

Some collateral harms affecting enemy civilians during a war are agentially mediated – for example, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 sparked an insurgency which killed thousands of Iraqi civilians. I call these ‘collaterally enabled harms.’ Intuitively, we ought to discount the weight that these harms receive in the ‘costs’ column of our ad bellum proportionality calculation. But I argue that an occupying military force with de facto political authority has a special obligation to provide minimal protection to (...) the civilian population. As a result, when an occupying military force collaterally enables a harm affecting the civilian population, the weight that the harm ought to receive in the ad bellum proportionality calculation is unaffected by the fact that the harm is agentially mediated – it ought to be weighed at least as heavily as those harms that the occupying force collaterally commits directly. As a result, satisfying the ad bellum proportionality constraint in wars of territorial occupation is more difficult than it has been thought. (shrink)

Faced with this divergence of views, the studies in this book therefore focus on the broader issue of whether archaeologists and other cultural heritage experts should ever work with the military, and if so, under what guidelines and ...

Corinth, which can be defined as the lock of the Peloponnesus for its site both unassailable and standing at the entrance of its eponymous isthmus, was occupied by the Latins as early as the 13th century and continued to be related to the princely or baronial power until the beginning of the 15th century. However, and besides its political and military interest, Corinth turns out to be a seigniory, as brought to light by historical sources, and notably archaeological finds, (...) which have testified to its wealth and to the various influences, western as well as indigenous, that it inherited as long as the Latin occupation lasted. (shrink)

Systematic entomology flourished as a branch of Natural History from the 1750s to the end of the nineteenth century. During this interval, the “era of Heroic Entomology,” the majority of workers in the field were dedicated amateurs. This article traces the demographic and occupational shifts in entomology through this 150-year interval and into the early twentieth century. The survey is based on entomologists who studied beetles (Coleoptera), and who named sufficient numbers of species to have their own names abbreviated by (...) subsequent taxonomists. In the eighteenth century, 27 entomologists achieved this level of prominence, of whom 37% were academics, 19% were doctors, 11% had private incomes, 19% were clergymen, and 8% were government officials. Many of those with private incomes were members of the European aristocracy, and all but one were European men. The nineteenth century list included 192 entomologists, of whom 17% were academics, 16% were museum curators, 2% were school teachers, 15% were doctors, 6% were military men, 7% were merchants, 2% were government entomologists, 6% had private incomes, 5% were clergymen, 5% were government officials, and 4% were lawyers. The demographics of entomology shifted dramatically in the nineteenth century. Whereas many of the noteworthy entomologists of the eighteenth century were German, Swedish, or French, in the nineteenth century, many more European countries are represented, and almost one-fifth of the noteworthy entomologists were from the United States. The nineteenth century list, like the eighteenth century list, contains no women. By the twentieth century, 63% of 178 noteworthy systematic entomologists were paid professionals, teaching entomology courses in universities, or studying insect taxonomy in museums and government-sponsored laboratories. Only one person on the twentieth century list had a private income, but women (ten individuals) were included on the list for the first time. (shrink)

The U.S.-led military incursion in Iraq and the subsequent occupation has been filled with myriad examples of the Bush Administration using misleading statements in an effort to win the support of American citizens, and in a secondary sense, the international community and the Iraqis. This situation provides many opportunities to analyze the use of sophistry and linguistic sleight of hand. In this paper, I draw upon the insights offered by Hannah Arendt in the earlier context of her critiques (...) of totalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s, and her later critique of the United States upon the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the midst of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Her insights regarding truth and lying in politics shed light on what is wrong with U.S. approaches today. Similar methods continue to be used today since people have continued to be gullible to these methods. (shrink)

Functionalists hold that the territorial rights of states are grounded solely in their successful performance of their morally mandated functions. In this paper, I defend a distinctive functionalist view of the right of territorial jurisdiction. I develop this view over the course of considering a variety of objections to functionalism that arise from reflection on cases of non- violent and otherwise rights-respecting annexation. Functionalism’s critics argue that it is committed to counterintuitive implications in these cases, as it is unable to (...) explain why the usurper states do not gain rights over the territory they take over. Against these critics, I argue that functionalism can in fact deliver intuitively plausible verdicts regarding: (a) the territorial rights of unsuccessful states; (b) the morality of military occupation; and (c) the appropriate response to past territorial injustices. (shrink)

Facing israelian intransigent Ilan Halevi explain the failure of Oslo’s agreement, from the first intifada to the second. The archaic structure of Israel in front of pluriethnic and multi-denominational society, holds only because the society defines as being in war. There is only an international intervention which can prevent, the risk to pass of hundred deaths to thousand deaths... This intervention is necessary, only because it can realize for the Israeli opinion which it is impossible to settle question by force. (...) The Israelis do not stop saying « we shall not negotiate under the fire », but Palestinians always knew that they are making peace, under the fire, colonial and military violence never broke off. (shrink)

Economic opportunities and the status of women are mediated by socio-political structural factors, as well as cultural-specific norms and patterns of behavior. As consumers (and, in many cases, regulators) of resources at the household level, women are integral to the analysis of economic and political development. This paper examines the role of motivation and perception on women’s participation in Palestinian Fair Trade projects. In the occupied Palestinian Territories, Fair Trade projects have been recently introduced by both international agencies and local (...) Palestinian associations as means through which women can earn income, participate in cooperative leadership, and engage at economic and political levels. Current scholarship largely focuses on measuring outcomes of Fair Trade initiatives or the experiences of members after the implementation of a project. However, there is less understanding about factors influencing the recruitment and retention of members into these initiatives. This ethnographic account explores both the motivations of members to join several couscous (maftoul) Fair Trade cooperatives and the members’ understanding Fair Trade goals and the cooperative structure. We examine four Palestinian women’s maftoul cooperatives and their unique challenges and opportunities. This project highlights the lack of detail most women have about the global Fair Trade market, which has a potential to result in decreased recruitment and retention rates. This paper also examines the tensions between product quality and market demands existing within couscous cooperatives and the competing demands of child-care needs, household pressures, and military restrictions on Palestinian movement enforced by the Israeli military within the occupied Palestinian Territories. (shrink)

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

Drawing on Levinasian concepts of sleep, insomnia, and the il y a, this paper examines the liminal states of insomnia and sleep within the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Sleep and insomnia, being proximates of death as well as displacement and anonymous existence successively, are topics that have not, to the best of our knowledge, received any critical commentary within (post)colonial studies. This paper argues that the Israeli military occupation deprives Palestinians from sleep, casting them into the horror and anonymous existence (...) of insomnia which, like the Israeli occupation, signifies impervious dialogue and is a catalyst for both psychic and physical displacement. As the Israeli occupation deprives Palestinians of place and sleep, two terms in the words of Levinas recognised as intertwined, it is the ethical responsibility of Palestinians and Palestinian leaders to arm themselves with wakefulness so as to secure their homeland (place) and to fortify themselves against displacement and the horror of the night. Sleep reveals an ethical dimension when examined closely within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict due to its subtle proximity to death. Hence, we contend that falling asleep on the part of Palestinians is unethical due to its direct adverse effects, namely, displacement and death. (shrink)

This book articulates a cosmopolitan theory of the principles which ought to regulate belligerents' conduct in the aftermath of war. Throughout, it relies on the fundamental principle that all human beings, wherever they reside, have rights to the freedoms and resources which they need to lead a flourishing life, and that national and political borders are largely irrelevant to the conferral of those rights. With that principle in hand, the book provides a normative defence of restitutive and reparative justice, the (...) punishment of war criminals, the resort to transitional foreign administration as a means to govern war-torn territories, and the deployment of peacekeeping and occupation forces. It also outlines various reconciliatory and commemorative practices which might facilitate the emergence of trust amongst enemies and thereby improve prospects for peace. The book offers analytical arguments and normative conclusions, with many historical and/or contemporary examples. (shrink)

Suicide attack is the most virulent and horrifying form of terrorism in the world today. The mere rumor of an impending suicide attack can throw thousands of people into panic. This occurred during a Shi‘a procession in Iraq in late August 2005, causing hundreds of deaths. Although suicide attacks account for a minority of all terrorist acts, they are responsible for a majority of all terrorism-related casualties, and the rate of attacks is rising rapidly across the globe. During 2000–2004, there (...) were 472 suicide attacks in 22 countries, killing more than 7,000 and wounding tens of thousands. Most have been carried out by Islamist groups claiming religious motivation, also known as jihadis. Rand Corp. vice president and terrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman has found that 80 percent of suicide attacks since 1968 occurred after the September 11 attacks, with jihadis representing 31 of the 35 responsible groups. More suicide attacks occurred in 2004 than in any previous year, and 2005 has proven even more deadly, with attacks in Iraq alone averaging more than one per day, according to data gathered by the U.S. military. The July 2005 London and Sinai bombings, a second round of bombings at tourist destinations in Bali in October, coordinated hotel bombings in Jordan in November, the arrival of suicide bombings in Bangladesh in December, a record year of attacks in Afghanistan, and daily bombings in Iraq have spurred renewed interest in suicide terrorism, with recent analyses stressing the strategic logic, organizational structure, and rational calculation involved. Whereas they once primarily consisted of organized campaigns by militarily weak forces aiming to end the perceived occupation of their homeland, as argued by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape in Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, suicide attacks today serve as banner actions for a thoroughly modern, global diaspora inspired by religion and claiming the role of vanguard for a massive, media-driven transnational political awakening. Living mostly in the diaspora and undeterred by the threat of retaliation against original home populations, jihadis, who are frequently middle-class, secularly well educated, but often “born-again” radical Islamists, including converts from Christianity, embrace apocalyptic visions for humanity's violent salvation. In Muslim countries and across western Europe, bright and idealistic Muslim youth, even more than the marginalized and dispossessed, internalize the jihadi story, illustrated on satellite television and the Internet with the ubiquitous images of social injustice and political repression with which much of the Muslim world's bulging immigrant and youth populations intimately identifies. From the suburbs of Paris to the jungles of Indonesia, I have interviewed culturally uprooted and politically restless youth who echo a stunningly simplified and decontextualized message of martyrdom for the sake of global jihad as life's noblest cause. They are increasingly as willing and even eager to die as they are to kill. The policy implications of this change in the motivation, organization, and calculation of suicide terrorism may be as novel as hitherto neglected. Many analysts continue to claim that jihadism caters to the destitute and depraved, the craven and criminal, or those who “hate freedom.” Politicians and pundits have asserted that jihadism is nihilistic and immoral, with no real program or humanity. Yet, jihadism is none of these things. Do we really understand the causes of today's suicide terrorism? Do suicide attacks stem mainly from a political cause, such as military occupation? Do they need a strong organization, such as Al Qaeda? What else could be done to turn the rising tide of martyrdom? (shrink)

I am proud to introduce this special issue of Philosophy in the Contemporary World, which is devoted to the range of possibilities open to us in dialogue with ancient philosophers. Needless to say, there will always be reason to return to ancient philosophical texts and retrace their lines of argument, precisely because these works will never cease to challenge us and offer us insight. But there is a special reason for us to take up this task in the present. As (...) I write this introduction, in July 2006, public discourse in the United States is bitterly divided over a wide range of moral and political controversies: chief among these are the issues surrounding the military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the various means employed by the U.S. government in investigating and imprisoning suspected terrorists; but also, there are deep divisions within the country over environmental issues, such as that of global warming, and ongoing debate over immigration policy, same-sex marriage, limits of free speech, and so on. While this list of controversies is typical enough, and while some conflict of opinion is surely a necessary part of any living democracy, the rancor in contemporary discourse has escalated to a point that would seem to call into question whether discourse has any role to play in public life besides bludgeoning one’s opponents. (shrink)

As practical beings, we act with a sense of freedom, or, to use Kant’s memorable phrase, “unter der Idee der Freiheit.” This attitude is present whenever we are deciding what to do, and it is most clearly revealed when we reflect on what we take for granted while deliberating. Consider a young man, Imad, who lives under an oppressive military occupation and deliberates about whether to join the resistance, leave the country, or continue quietly in his studies hoping (...) that the occupation will be eliminated through the efforts of others. Taking any of these alternatives is likely to have momentous consequences upon his physical safety, his self-esteem, and realization of his goals. Yet, he can no longer tolerate his indecision and feels that he must commit himself somehow. One thing is apparent; Imad faces alternative courses of action, each of which he regards as open for him to undertake at the time. Were he to come to believe of any of the alternatives that it is no longer a genuine option, he would cease deliberating about whether to take it. An agent’s “sense” or “awareness” of personal freedom is nothing more than a presumption of open alternatives made explicit in reflection. But what exactly is its content? What does one accept in presuming a course of action to be “open”? To fix.. (shrink)

Children ‘born of war’ refer to people of any age conceived as the result of sexual violence at the hands of armed forces or groups during war, displacement, genocide or military occupation. Due to the circumstances of their birth, children ‘born of war’ can experience social stigma, discrimination and exclusion, resulting in diminished life chances and opportunities. At the same time, children ‘born of war’ fall through the cracks of global policy frameworks. In this article, we explore the (...) reasons for this, arguing that the nature of the harm these children endure renders their status as a victim group elusive. We propose a survivor-centred approach drawing on the lived experiences of children ‘born of war’. The approach recognizes the agency of children and draws attention to their expressed desire to contribute to, and participate in, processes of social reconstruction and reconciliation. (shrink)

The early 18th century saw the beginnings of Russian military occupation of Poland, followed by a secret agreement by the neighboring countries, meant to maintain a political status quo in the internal affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then, the dynamics of the economic transformations of the European continent led to a permanent economic deadlock, particularly in the regions with large agricultural areas, such as Poland. Five years from the turn of the 18th century the Polish polity disappeared from (...) the map of Europe for 123 years. Analyzing the relationships and causes of a number of phenomena related to Old Poland is made all the more difficult by some historical processes which blow some ritual events of limited importance out of proportion, such as theadoption of the Constitution of 3 May (1791; particularly due to its content being rather reactionary); these also glorify the past of the society and the state as a “golden myth” of social harmony in relationships obtaining within the classes and between them. (shrink)

The people of Gaza endure physical traumas, and psychological and social wounds directly linked to the combination of military occupations and the closing of its border, essentially forcing and trapping them in despair. The destruction of healthcare infrastructure in particular, has methodically added strain on an already hopeless situation, severely affecting the availability and accessibility of essential healthcare services for the population, which further perpetuates the cycle of peoples suffering. Such suffering has escalated to extreme proportions in 2023. As (...) the violence and attacks continue with flagrant disregard of the Geneva and Hague conventions, the Rome Statute, occupational law, and international and humanitarian law, amid outcries from the international community, we see hospitals, that are traditionally regarded as sanctuaries of humanity transform into corridors of horror. (shrink)

The article examines some recent areas of Al Qaeda and salafi-jihadi ideology and argues that, while there has been an evolution in strategy since 9/11, the core elements of salafi-jihadi ideology have remained unchanged. The article explores ideological, technical and aesthetic aspects of Al Qaeda and salafi-jihadi literature. It is argued that salafi-jihadi ideology is characterized by a particular association between political virtue and visceral violence, an association that dominates the aesthetic and cultural universe created by salafi-jihadis. Existing views that (...) salafi-jihadi thought represents an ethical project or a project for humanity or a response to military occupations are, it is argued, consequences of a broader philosophical and social theory tradition that privileges a specifically theological idea of sacrifice. Instead, it is argued that salafi-jihadi ideology is characterized by an array of sharp oppositions. These contrasting doublets of ideas include ones about the temporal world and the afterlife, authoritarian law and violent chaos, loyalty and enmity, defilement and plenitude, tangible lands and imagined spaces. These severe theoretical oppositions in salafi-jihadi thinking are outlined and considered in relation to broader social theory. The article also considers the sociological importance of ideas of Paradise and the afterlife in salafi-jihadi thought. The distinct nature of salafi-jihadi thought, and the understanding of political violence it contains, are considered in relation to nationalist jihadi and political Islamist tendencies. (shrink)

Humanitarian agencies have confronted one disaster after another over the last twenty-five years. Decades of intense growth in reacting to complex global calamities have seriously affected humanitarian efforts. Contending organizations – NGOs, states – engage in transnational interventions. From regions of natural disaster to sectors marked by political clashes, a new rationale for intervention has appeared which merges humanitarian assistance and military engagement. Humanitarian intervention sanctions the notion that military power is a necessary part of the responsibility to (...) protect. The imperative to safeguard lives in jeopardy results in a form of humanitarian and military government in constant motion from one disaster to the next. Under the mandate of the right to intervene, this tactic confronts state sovereignty, particularly since humanitarian organizations engage in political activities such as establishing respect for human rights. The relation between military and humanitarian intervention in the context of disaster, is founded on a calculus of security, based in the legitimacy of measures meant to safeguard human life. A new form of humanitarian governance is thus emerging from military occupations and natural disasters. This paper will examine the human rights consequences of these states of disaster and the novel form of government associated with them. (shrink)

The defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945 required historians in both countries to reevaluate the past to make sense of national catastrophe. Sebastian Conrad's The Quest for the Lost Nation analyzes this process comparatively in the context of allied military occupation and the Cold War to reveal how historians in both countries coped with a discredited national history and gradually salvaged a national identity. He pays special attention to the role of social, discursive, and transnational contexts that (...) shaped this process to highlight the different courses that the politics of the past took in postwar Germany and Japan. The picture that emerges of German and Japanese historiography and the respective attempts to come to terms with the past is at odds with the conventional narrative that usually praises West German historians and society for having come to terms with their dark past, as opposed to postwar Japan, which is usually regarded as having fallen short by comparison. There was in fact far more critical historiographical engagement with the past in Japan than in West Germany in the 1950s. Reasons for the divergent evolution of the politics of the past in Germany and Japan should not be sought in the peculiarities of postwar national history but rather in an entangled transnational context of defeat, occupation, and the Cold War, whose effects played out differently in each country. These conclusions and others reveal some of the opportunities and special challenges of comparative transnational history. (shrink)

If the instance of human rights cannot ensure the protection of the rightless, as Arendt famously claimed, how can the rightless struggle for freedom and equality? In this essay, I attempt to answer this question by reconsidering Arendt’s influential critique of human rights in light of the two polar responses it evoked from contemporary French philosophers Jacques Rancière and Étienne Balibar. Rancière, who objects to Arendt’s delimiting of the political, finds her argument excluding and dangerous. Balibar, on the other hand, (...) believes that it conveys an immense potential for politics to come, as it points to the dialectical political truth of equaliberty. In the following, I show the problematics of Rancière’s ingenious formulation of rights, and the answer Balibar’s original interpretation of Arendt’s thought might suggest in response. I contend that working through Rancière’s critique of Arendt’s argument and Balibar’s affirmation of it not only highlights the merits of her critical account but also points to the fundamental relation between Arendt’s work on rights and her later discussions of the human condition of non-sovereignty and the power of promises. I believe that such a reading can contribute to our interpretation of Arendt, and pave new routes of action for non-citizens (such as refugees, stateless persons and subjects of military occupation), who cannot employ the authorities’ strength for their protection. (shrink)

There is, of course, no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" regressing to tribalism. The conflict is centered in territories that have been under harsh military occupation since 1967. The conqueror is a major armed power, acting with massive military, economic and diplomatic support from the global superpower. Its subjects are alone and defenseless, many barely surviving in miserable camps.

In a significant early case, the ICTY commented: “The essence of the whole corpus of international humanitarian law as well as human rights law lies in the protection of the human dignity of every person…. The general principle of respect for human dignity is . . . the very raison d'être of international humanitarian law and human rights law.” Is it true that international humanitarian law and international human rights law share the same “essence,” and that essence is the general (...) principle of respect for human dignity? Is it true that, in the words of Charles Beitz, humanitarian law is “perhaps better described as the law of ‘human rights in armed conflicts’”? To answer yes, I argue, amounts to a reinterpretation of IHL that drifts far from its history. This reinterpretation is what I label human rights thinking . In its origins, IHL was not designed to protect human dignity, but to reduce human suffering; it was a form of disaster relief. Human rights law, by contrast, originated as a blueprint for the kind of peacetime societies that would no longer plunge the world into what the UN Charter calls the “untold sorrow” of war. Nevertheless, law changes. Perhaps the nature of IHL has evolved over time in the direction of human rights thinking, and should evolve that way. That is the view I defend-–with some qualifications-–in the final sections of this essay. First, I explore the very different genealogies of IHL and human rights law, and explain how human rights thinking migrated into IHL. I attribute the migration to international criminal law, military occupations, and reactions to the U.S. war on terrorism. In the final sections, I explore two ways human rights thinking can be pursued in wars. One of them, I will argue, overplays and overestimates what human rights thinking can accomplish. It does so by, in effect, willing away fundamental differences between war and peace. The other is an approach that I have defended for more than three decades. It consists, at bottom, of taking a civilian’s-eye view of the disasters of war and reading the law accordingly-–recognizing, one might say, that Mother Courage and her children matter just as much to the law of war as Henry V and his band of brothers. (shrink)

Ukraine has always had a special place in Canadian foreign policy. Currently, Canada is deeply engaged in supporting Ukraine to restore political and economic stability and to implement democratic reforms. The Government in Ottawa has condemned Russian aggressive policy and the illegal military occupation of Crimea and has taken a variety of steps and initiatives since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine in 2014 including imposing sanctions, economic and military assistance, and supporting of NATO measures.

Everyday resistance is about the many ways people undermine power and domination through their routine and everyday actions. Unlike open rebellions or demonstrations, it is typically hidden, not politically articulated, and often ingenious. But because of its disguised nature, it is often poorly understood as a form of politics and its potential underestimated. Conceptualizing Everyday Resistance presents an analytical framework and theoretical tools to understand the entanglements of everyday power and resistance. These are applied to diverse empirical cases including queer (...) relationships in the context of heteronormativity, Palestinian daily life under military occupation, workplace behaviors under office surveillance, and the tactics of fat acceptance bloggers facing the War against obesity. Johansson and Vinthagen argue that everyday resistance is best understood by accounting for different repertoires of tactics, relations between actors, and struggles around constructions of time and space. Through a critical dialogue with the work of James C. Scott, Michel de Certeau, and Asef Bayat, they aim to reconstruct the field of resistance studies, expanding what counts as resistance and building systematic analysis. Conceptualizing Everyday Resistance offers researchers and students from different theoretical and empirical backgrounds, an essential overview of the field and a creative framework that illuminates the potential of all people to transform society. (shrink)

The article presents the military fortifications built by the Germans during World War II near Tomaszów Mazowiecki in the years 1940–1944, especially the long belt of fortifications called Piliza Stellung, although it focuses on a relatively short section running along the Pilica River from Sulejów to Inowłódz and Lubocz (near Rzeczyca). The paper discusses various types of shelters, and more broadly presents the preserved military fortifications in Tomaszów Mazowiecki and the railway shelter complexes (“Anlage Mitte”) in Konewka and (...) Jelenia. (shrink)

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions, there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys (...) a less obvious, but stronger, argument – one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism. (shrink)

What role does ethics play in modern-day warfare? Is it possible for ethics and militarism to exist hand-in-hand? James Eastwood examines the Israeli military and its claim to be "the most moral army in the world." This claim has been strongly contested by human rights bodies and international institutions in their analysis of recent military engagements in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon. Yet at the same time, many in Israel believe this claim: including the general public, (...) class='Hi'>military personnel, and politicians. Compiled from extensive research including interviews with soldiers, Eastwood unpacks the ethical pedagogy of the Israeli military, as well as soldier-led activism which voices a moral critique, and argues that the belief in moral warfare does not exist separately from the growing violence of Israel's occupation. This book is ideal for those interested in military ethics and Israeli politics, and provides crucial in-depth analysis for students and researchers alike. It examines theories of morality and ethics in war through a comprehensive study of the Israel Defence Forces. It will appeal to researchers and students exploring military ethics and Israeli politics, international relations, as well as those studying war and politics in the wider Middle East. It also examines theories of morality and ethics in war through a comprehensive study of the Israel Defence Forces. (shrink)

Understanding how people behave when facing hazardous situations, how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence the risk taking (RT) decision making process and to what extent it is possible to modify their reactions externally, are questions that have long interested academics and society in general. In the spheres of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), the military, finance and sociology, this topic has multidisciplinary implications because we all constantly face risk taking situations. Researchers have hitherto assessed risk taking profiles by conducting (...) questionnaires prior to and after the presentation of stimuli; however, this can lead to the production of biased, non-realistic, risk taking profiles. This is due to the reflexive nature of choosing an answer in a questionnaire, which is remote from the reactive, emotional and impulsive decision making processes inherent to real, risky situations. One way to address this question is to exploit VR capabilities to generate immersive environments that recreate realistic seeming but simulated hazardous situations. We propose VR as the next-generation tool to study risk taking processes, taking advantage of the big four families of metrics which can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity: the real-world risks approach (high presence VR environments triggering real-world reactions), embodied interactions (more natural interactions eliciting natural behaviours), stealth assessment (unnoticed real-time assessments offering efficient behavioural metrics) and physiological real-time measurement (physiological signals avoiding subjective bias). Additionally, VR can provide an invaluable tool, after the assessment phase, to train in skills related to risk taking due to its transferability to real-world situations. (shrink)

In his influential history of the post-1967 history of the Palestinian Occupation, radical Israeli architect Eyal Weizman show how even well-meaning decolonial efforts from privileged allies can be coopted by the colonizers, in what I call “de-decolonizing.” Here I focus on one of his examples, namely IDF (Israeli Defense Force) military professors repurposing the anarcho-communist philosophy of French postmodernist Gilles Deleuze into a weapon against Palestinian guerrilla resistance. My conclusion is that attempted decolonizing via (inevitably complicit) privileged allies (...) must include what Weizman calls “co-resistance,” and I call “reconstruction.” In other words, when a Deleuzian “line of flight” to “escape” is impossible, as arguably for Palestinians today, then one should follow the heroic example of the Bedouins, who (as Weizman acknowledges) are the only Arabs who have never stopped rebuilding their Palestine. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of (...) sufficiently high standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

Mourir pour la France, faire la guerre, tomber au champ d'honneur... Les jeunes générations y songent-elles encore? Il est vrai que la désacralisation de la chose militaire, propagée par l'hédonisme-pacifisme triomphant, a eu raison de cette aspiration traditionnelle. Le 14juillet des dernières décennies n'est-il pas devenu une fête pour la fête parmi tant d'autres, où les défilés militaires s'exposent au regard comme un spectacle de foire? L'Ecole a, elle-même, renoncé à exalter les vertus de la nation et de la patrie (...) tant glorifiées par la Révolution. Cette mise au ban du soldat comme de l'Histoire ne traduit-elle pas un déni de réalité caractérisé? Comme s'il suffisait de fermer les yeux sur les multiples motifs d'hostilité entre les Etats pour en neutraliser la bête noire : l'éternel retour de la guerre et de ses innombrables morts que l'esprit victimaire d'aujourd'hui récupère insidieusement. C'est oublier que la France ne serait pas la France sans ces guerres qui ont fait date, sans un choix décisif de société, sans un refus de se soumettre à la loi de l'Occupant. Bref, sans une certaine idée de la France... Les figures d'épouvantail successives sous lesquelles disparaît désormais le soldat - gendarme, bourreau, nazi, etc., - achèvent de brouiller le sens profond de son sacrifice. Où la part de sang versé et répandu, renforçant le lien de l'individu à la Nation, révèle aussi la part inconnue, transcendante, de l'homme face à la mort. Robert Redeker nous invite à explorer le gouffre d'incompréhension qui sépare le soldat de la société civile actuelle à la lumière d'un brillant arrière-plan philosophique et historique s'attachant à cerner l'essence de la guerre. (shrink)

If neoliberal globalization was a regime of American economic unilateralism, has this been succeeded by or combined with political and military unilateralism? This discussion probes the emerging features of a hybrid formation of neoliberal empire; a mélange of political-military and economic unilateralism, an attempt to merge geopolitics with the aims and techniques of neoliberalism. This is examined in relation to government, privatization, trade, aid, marketing and the occupation of Iraq. A further question is what kind of wider (...) strategy is taking shape amid the turmoil of the new wars. (shrink)

RESUMEN Cuando se mira la masacre de El Salado, es difícil no preguntarse por los factores que llevaron a esta comunidad de los Montes de María, en el contexto de la guerra rural que vivía Colombia a finales del siglo XX, a volverse un objetivo militar por parte de las A.U.C. (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), es decir, a recibir la marca o estigma de 'pueblo guerrillero'; en otras palabras, a convertirse en un pueblo masacrable. El presente artículo intenta abordar esta (...) cuestión y para ello analiza las consecuencias de la ocupación de las FARC desde su ingreso a la región en los noventa. Los modos como este poder fareano dispuso de lógicas guerreristas y dejó poco margen de maniobra y libertad para los pobladores de El Salado; los saladeros no tuvieron opción ni libertad, y la cohabitación se confundió con la colaboración, la pasividad con la pertenencia. En una segunda parte, revisa los efectos de la arremetida brutal de las FARC contra cierto grupo de pobladores (en especial, ganaderos y fuerza pública); de algún modo, la masacre del 2000, ejecutada por las AUC, fue una respuesta impulsada por un odio desmedido frente a una violencia también excesiva por parte de las FARC en los años anteriores a la masacre. En este apartado, se habla acerca del odio y la venganza que se constituyen en afectos que contribuyeron decisivamente -entre otros más- a la masacre del año 2000. Las elaboraciones sobre la economía del odio de Sara Ahmed (2015) y las de Laura Quintana sobre los afectos (2020 y 2021) serán fundamentales. ABSTRACT When looking at the El Salado massacre, we wonder about the factors that led this town of los Montes de María, in the context of the rural war in Colombia at the end of the 20th century, to become a military objective by the A.U.C (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia), that is, to receive the brand or stigma of 'guerrilla people'; that is, to become a massacrable town. This article tries to address this issue, thus analyzing the consequences of the FARC occupation since its entry into the region in the nineties. Ways like this Farean power had warmer logic and left little room for maneuver and freedom for the residents of El Salado; The saladeros had no choice or freedom, and cohabitation was confused with collaboration, passivity with belonging. in a second part, it reviews the effects of the brutal attack by the FARC against a certain group of residents (especially, ranchers and the military); in a way, the 2000 massacre, carried out by the AUC, was an inordinately hateful response to excessive violence by the FARC in the years before the massacre. In this section, we talk about the hatred and revenge that constitute elements that contributed decisively -among others- to the 2000 massacre. The elaborations on the economy of hate by Sara Ahmed (2015) and the elaborations of Laura Quintana on affects (2020 and 2021) will be fundamental. (shrink)

The metropolis of Cairo has witnessed unprecedented transformations since the January revolution of 2011. It witnessed evidently an escalation of war zones and confrontations between protesters and police forces; it also witnessed the militarization and policing of the urban sphere, the creation of segregating buffer walls that paralysed entire areas. However, the Tahrir effect remains evident in that it revolutionized the very notion of what a public space is about. It succeeded in imposing an entirely unprecedented novel choreography for the (...) city in which the ‘stage’ of Tahrir was the exemplary moment that triggered extended and replicated dramaturgical violent public confrontations, public performances and occupations in all the squares of Egypt. This article traces the transformations in relation to the debates pertaining to the ‘right to the city’ relating to the expanding visibility of the street vendors. Despite the military taking over after the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo has witnessed for the past three years a mesmerizing flourishing art scene. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Benjamin I. Schwartz (1916-1999)Hoyt Cleveland TillmanBenjamin Sadie Schwartz was born on December 12, 1916,1 to Hyman and Jennie Weinberg Schwartz. In the wake of the Depression, this struggling family moved from the immigrant section of East Boston (near what became Logan Airport) to Orchestra, a working-class section of the city. Ben's intelligence and dedication to learning earned him the opportunity to study at Boston Latin, the city's premier high (...) school for talented youths, and he won a scholarship to attend Harvard College in 1934. Because the collegiate life of Harvard's house system was inaccessible to him, Ben commuted daily from home and ate his sack lunches with the other "townies" on the steps outside the buildings in Harvard Yard. The nationalizing experiences of being Jewish and poor surely enhanced his sensitivity to tensions within cultures and sharpened the critical edge of his reflections on elites and their ideologies. Moreover, his own experiences enabled an empathy with economically and culturally disadvantaged students, for he generously extended himself especially to such students during his long teaching career at Harvard, from 1950 through 1987. Indeed, his office door was always open to students, and no one needed an appointment to come to discuss ideas with him. Furthermore, his critical concerns about contemporary trends in society and polity continued to be central to his life as an engaged intellectual even after he had retired from formal teaching duties.After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1938 with a major in Romance Languages and Literatures, he went on to earn a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1940. Unable to find a regular teaching position, he worked as a substitute teacher. Blessed with an enduring and profound spirituality, he considered becoming a rabbi. World War II intervened to change his life. Serving as a cryptanalyst from 1942 to 1946 in the Signal Corps, he decoded Japanese military cables; and he worked in 1946-1947 as a censor of the Japanese press during the beginning phase of the American Occupation. He rose to the rank of captain. With the educational benefits extended to veterans, he returned to Harvard, where he initially sought to focus on Buddhism, but his professors discouraged him on the grounds that the field required too many Asian languages for someone to begin in his thirties. He was admonished to focus on modern China, for that field required only that he supplement the Japanese language, which he had gained during his military service, with a reading knowledge of Chinese. He threw himself enthusiastically into reading both modern Chinese and what he referred to as "outbidding classical Chinese" because he loved to read texts to explore cultures and encounter peoples. Within less than three years, he not only earned a master's [End Page 183] in East Asian Studies and a Ph.D. in History and Far Eastern Languages but also became, in 1950, a Harvard instructor in history and government. Rising quickly through the ranks, he was promoted to assistant professor in 1951, associate professor in 1956, and professor in 1960. Moreover, he became widely regarded as "the scholar's scholar" at Harvard's East Asian Research Center.His first book, Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao (Harvard University Press, 1951), was a revised version of his doctoral dissertation. Modern China scholars have in later years hailed this pioneering work for going against the tide of American political assumptions about Soviet Russian control of the communist movement in China. He demonstrated that Mao had defied Soviet orders and deviated from Soviet plans in struggling to gain power in China; furthermore, Ben also suggested that communism was devolving through expansion. Establishing an intellectual orientation that informed his later work, Ben was also using texts from a movement to explore the conscious life of leading figures and their personalities in the context of concrete historical circumstances and contingencies in order to determine how ideas related to actions. Providing translated texts for others to join the exploration of the interaction between ideology and behavior, he was one of three compilers of A Documentary History of Chinese Communism (Harvard, 1952). He... (shrink)