Critical Geopolitics

I will be giving a talk at the Harriman Institute of Columbia University on Tuesday 1 November 2011 at noon entitled ‘After Ethnic Cleansing: Bosnian Lessons for the Caucasus?’ I will be following in the footsteps of Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, who last week gave a lecture at Harriman entitled: An American Foreign Policy Success Story: The Dayton Accords, Republika Srpska, and Bosnia’s European Integration. The appearance legitimately generated some controversy both beforehand and on the evening in question. While my talk will not address Dodik’s discourse directly — I’ve a paper on this very subject under review — I will be touching upon the idea of the RS as a ‘liberal ethnocracy’ and BiH as a ‘model’ for other conflict zones.

The distinguished historian Melvyn Leffler presented his latest edited collection (with Jeffrey Legro) at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday: In Uncertain Times: American Foreign Policy after the Berlin Wall and 9/11 (Cornell UP). It brings together practitioners and academics, policy makers and analysts/critics (I expect Wilson will have video of the event up on its website soon). Presenting were chapter editors Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and Philip Zelikow. Their arguments were most interesting and all emplotted as ‘dubunking’ popular myths and conspiracy theories. Edelman’s object of critique was the inflated and hyperbolic reading of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a picture created by what he described as selective leaking and sensational press coverage. Wolfowitz addressed the 1989-92 defense planning process, and critiqued the prevailing interpretation that is colored by hindsight not what was going on at the time. The planning process was, he argued, for a substantial build-down of the US military, and the strategic thinking that emerged was uncontroversial and became the consensus in the later 1990s. Philip Zelikow addressed US strategic planning in the wake of 9/11 and debunked the ‘neocon cabal’ theory of the US policy that emerged in the wake of the trauma of the attack. This was a rich session and a friend and I had a most interesting chat with Wolfowitz afterwards about the current ‘Quds Force plot’ and how to respond: it made me think more about the life of the concept ‘over-interpret.’ The book looks terrific and features essays by critics like Bruce Cummings and John Mueller.

One of the joys, and also frustrations, of living in Washington DC is that there are so many interesting talks going on around town, and so many interesting people to see. Add to that the regular flow of interesting articles that comes one’s way. Below are some pieces I found particularly helpful this week:

1. My friend David Newman’s op ed in the Jerusalem Post on the dreadful state of the Israeli-Palestinian non-negotiations: Actions Not Slogans, For the New Year 
2. Mark Danner’s appropriation of Agamben (following in the footsteps of a horde of acedemics) to engage the legal order still in place in the wake of 9/11. Yesterday at the Newseum Dick Cheney pointed to the assassination of al Awlaki as something he supported but then, pushing back at Obama’s speech in Cairo where he said the following: “Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country.  The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals.” Cheney said how can Obama criticize Bush for “enhanced interrogation techniques”, which kept the US safe and were not torture in Cheney’s book, when he’s just order the assassination of an American citizen! Incidently, Ron Paul suggested this action was ‘impeachable’ and a movement towards ‘tyranny.’
3. The event at Carnegie on South Ossetia on ground-level peacebuilding efforts which are being patiently nurtured by Susan Allen Nan (audio available).
4. The brilliant Liz Fuller’s analysis of the South Ossetian ‘elections’ which reveal how power operates there and what is potentially on the cards for the future (what some will undoubtedly call an Ossetian Anschluss, others a natural and inevitable union of territories that never should have been separated into two different polities).

Over a year ago the British NGO Conciliation Resources asked me to write an essay as a starting point for a track two dialogue among a group of policy scholars from Armenia, Stepanakert and Azerbaijan on the question of ‘return and its alternatives’ in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. The process was a rich and rewarding one, and it has culminated in the  publication of a booklet on the topic which is available on the CR website (click here). The booklet is published in Armenian and Azeri also. The Karabakh conflict has many distinctive features which make it radically different from BiH. Yet, there are issues and processes which similar, and crucial lessons to be learned, if there is a will to move this dangerously stalemated conflict towards a more sustainable positive peace.

On Friday last John O’Loughlin and I talked to a full seminar room at George Washington on our research findings in three of the Eurasian ‘De Facto States’ (the emergent consensual term among academics though this is at variance with more geopoliticizing understandings). We presented 10 slides and disaggregated the results on ‘Soviet Union’s collapse as a wrong move’ and ‘best political system’ by age and socio-economic status). We are currently preparing our first publication comparing these regions as well as a paper that deals specifically with South Ossetia.

John O’Loughlin and I will be talking on Friday May 20, 2001 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in the Voesar Conference Room, 1957 E Street, Suite 412 on our research on de facto states.

The talk will be a ‘world premier’ of our survey results from South Ossetia, and a contrast of these with our survey results from Transnistria and Abkhazia. The title of the talk is:

INSIDE THE EURASIAN DE FACTO STATES: 2010 COMPARATIVE SURVEYS OF PUBLIC ATTITUDES IN ABKHAZIA, SOUTH OSSETIA AND TRANSDNIESTRIA.

The Association for the Study of Nationalities conference in New York is one of the best conferences out there for students of the intersections of geopolitics, identity and conflict. This year’s conference was excellent: very stimulating panels and sessions with some of the leading experts in the world. It was my pleasure to participate in a session devoted to the question of return in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. This was followed by a session devoted to Bosnia Remade that was a fair minded and open discussion of the book, what it seeks to achieve and what some of its limitations are.

Events in Bosnia are entering uncharted territory with the RS National Assembly’s call for a referendum on the state level Constitutional Court. I’ve got two deadlines approaching, one for a draft paper on my August War project, and one for a presentation comparing attitudes in de facto states. But I’ll try to keep my eye on events in BiH, and hope that good sense prevails.