Critical Geopolitics

Earlier this week, Tom De Waal organized a superb two day conference on the South Caucasus After 20 Years. The sessions were very well attended and the level of analysis critical and realistic, with next to no nationalist posturing or polemics. See his recent commentary on the subject.

Tomorrow, the Harriman Institute at Columbia University is hosting a one day conference: Frozen Conflicts Twenty Years After the Fall of the Soviet Union

Friday, 02 December 2011, 9:00am–6:00pm
1501 International Affairs Building

I am presenting on public opinion in Transnistria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the first session.

9:15–11:00: Panel I: Governance and Institutions in Unrecognized Polities
Chair: Kimberly Marten, Barnard College
Participants:
Laurence Broers, Conciliation Resources
Dennis Sammut, London Information Network, Conflicts and State-building
Sergey Markedonov, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Gerard Toal, Virginia Tech

Click here for the program

On Saturday the 19th I presented at the ASEEES on the topic of ‘Contemporary Geopolitical Attitudes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Some Survey Evidence’ to an early morning audience of about 30 people. In the next two months I will endeavor to write up this presentation in the form of an article to be sent out for review. I have an audio recording of the session of the session with presentations in the following order, and will post it when I get the time to convert it:

The Localized Geopolitics of Eurasian De Facto States—Suite 268
Chair: Adna Karamehic-Oates, Virginia Tech U

Cory Welt, George Wasington U
“Interethnic Fear or Intra-ethnic Politics? Revising the 1989-1992 South Ossetian Conflict”

Gerard Toal, Virginia Tech
“Contemporary Geopolitical Attitudes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia: Survey Evidence”

John O’Loughlin, U of Colorado Boulder
“Destined to Divide? Contrasting Geopolitical Attitudes in Transnistria and Moldova”

Discussant.: Rebecca A. Chamberlain, London School of Economics & Political Science (UK)

Questions from the audience.

The book discussion of Worlds Apart: Bosnian Lessons for Global Security at the Wilson Center was very well attended. Ambassador Hunt was very dynamic in presentation and we had an excellent discussion of the book. She presented six lessons from her experience with diplomacy and on-the-ground grassroots activism, especially with women’s groups and displaced persons, that are relevant to conflict worldwide:

1. Test Truisms
2. Question Stereotypes
3. Find Out-Of-Power Allies (overlooked women leaders)
4. Find Fault
5. Embrace Responsibility

It is interesting to consider these lessons in juxtaposition to those enumerated by another prominent Harvard professor, those in the epilogue of Samantha Power’s Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vierira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World (my American Foreign Policy class recently read and discussed it).

1. Legitimacy matters, and it comes from legal authority (or consent) and competence performance.
2. Spoilers, rogue states, and nonstate militias must be engaged
3. Fearful people must be made more secure
4. Dignity is the cornerstone of order
5. Outsiders must bring humility and patience in our dealings with ‘foreign lands.’

There is much that could be said about both sets of ‘lessons’ and their dilemmas. The most important point is how both proceed from a desire to engage the world and lift it up in positive ways, a desire that is long rooted in the American experience but is also noble and worthy. Given the unfolding economic condition in the US and elsewhere, it is unclear if this engaged emancipatory impulse will be sustained. I think it is in grave danger of being eclipsed by a much more parochial self-interested mindset.

I’ve been reading Worlds Apart: Bosnian Lessons for Global Security, the new book by Swanee Hunt who served as US Ambassador to Austria during the Bosnian War. She’s done terrific work in bringing gender into the discussion of violence, conflict and development, calling out what is always there but often not recognized or acknowledged sufficiently in our culture (ironically we let perpetrators of violence set the terms of debate about that violence when we know more about them than they know about themselves). Its a beautifully produced book and a compelling read. I’m looking forward to a public discussion with her on the book at the Woodrow Wilson Center on 14th of November at 4 pm. I’ve cancelled my American Foreign Policy class at this time and invited the students to attend as its relevant to their studies.

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.