The Ethics of Intervention: US Writers and the Mexican Revolution

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 613-638
Author(s):  
KIMBERLY O'NEILL
Keyword(s):  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
State Power ◽  
Katherine Anne Porter ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
The Us ◽  
John Reed ◽  
Foreign Correspondent ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Revolution

During the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), stories of dangerous bandits, rebels, dictators, and Indians defined Mexico for US audiences. Most scholars assume that these narratives reinforce the conventional rhetoric of Latin savagery that justifies US imperialism, but this essay reveals an array of writers who told such stories to undermine state power and contest military intervention. Three of the era's best-known leftist journalists, John Kenneth Turner, John Reed, and Katherine Anne Porter, craft a discourse of activism to help the US public imagine themselves as participants in a new hemispheric democracy. These writers posit moral bonds between the US and Mexico that exceed the expansionist interests of politicians and industrialists. Their vision was embodied in the trope of the foreign correspondent, an American who could physically enter Mexican territory, witness the crimes and heroisms of the revolution, and relay the voices of the Mexicans whose lives were at stake in the conflict. Turner, Reed, and Porter hope that journalists can inspire democratic fraternity between the US and Mexican peoples. They also set the terms and conventions utilized by radical humanitarian journalists for decades to come.

The Mexico-US Border and the Mexican Revolution

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Hernandez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Northern Border ◽  
Border Communities ◽  
The Us ◽  
Radical Ideology ◽  
Special Meaning ◽  
The Revolution

The 1910 Mexican Revolution erupted as one of several major revolutions of the 20th century throughout the world. Although the revolution touched every corner of the Mexican Republic, it took on special meaning along Mexico’s northern border with the United States. Some of the first expressions of discontent aimed at the Porfirian regime were manifested in the Mexican north. Some of the battles that marked major turning points among the various revolutionary factions took place in the region. Further, the US–Mexican borderlands played a central role in the revolution because of easy access to arms arsenals and functioned as both safe haven and as a base from which to launch attacks. It also became an entry point for radical ideology. Capturing and controlling key cities along the border provided revolutionary factions the upper hand in the long ten-year war. Revolutionaries including Ricardo Flores Magón and Encarnación Díaz, among others, were apprehended and charged with violation of US neutrality laws by American officials who, in collaboration with the Porfirian regime, worked to intercept and arrest individuals deemed a danger to both US and Mexican peace and security. The revolution left a long legacy in border communities as it served as a watershed moment regarding immigration policy as well as in the way Mexican-origin people in the United States were perceived.

Anti-System Politics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Term Result ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right

Recent elections in the advanced Western democracies have undermined the basic foundations of political systems that had previously beaten back all challenges—from both the Left and the Right. The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, only months after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, signaled a dramatic shift in the politics of the rich democracies. This book traces the evolution of this shift and argues that it is a long-term result of abandoning the postwar model of egalitarian capitalism in the 1970s. That shift entailed weakening the democratic process in favor of an opaque, technocratic form of governance that allows voters little opportunity to influence policy. With the financial crisis of the late 2000s, these arrangements became unsustainable, as incumbent politicians were unable to provide solutions to economic hardship. Electorates demanded change, and it had to come from outside the system. Using a comparative approach, the text explains why different kinds of anti-system politics emerge in different countries and how political and economic factors impact the degree of electoral instability that emerges. Finally, it discusses the implications of these changes, arguing that the only way for mainstream political forces to survive is for them to embrace a more activist role for government in protecting societies from economic turbulence.

Contribution à l'étude des idées politiques de Napoléon Ier

Res Publica ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
André Cabanis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
To Come ◽  
Napoleon I ◽  
The Revolution

The writings of Napoleon I and his contemporaries' testimonies reveal the image of a statesman more taken up with action than theories and whom circonstances have made go through different stages in his political  convictions. During his youth, he takes up all the ideas of the eighteenth century, even to their contradictions, though the temper of the leader to come, sometimes shows through already. During the Consulate - a time of dissimulation - he tries to conciliate around him the most antagonistic ideas in order to strengthen his popular dictatorship. When at the height of his glory - about 1808-1811 - he longs to enter the «European Concert» white building a universal Empire, and he thinks of reviving the old regime society, white not admitting any intermediary between the Nation and himself. Defeated, then deported, he clearly analyses the causes of his failure and makes the most of future by reappealing to the ideas of the Revolution.

Riding the Waves of (Post)Colonial Migrancy: Are We All Really in the Same Boat?

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Carule Fabricant
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
News Article ◽  
Container Ship ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Port Of Los Angeles ◽  
To Come ◽  
Car Accident

I would like to begin by juxtaposing two very different pictures of global travel taken from recent articles in the popular media and considering their implications both for contemporary postcolonial theory and for our readings of “third world” fictional texts. In one article from the summer of 1997 (Newton 6-7), the Los Angeles New Times displayed on its cover a slender man in his thirties staring hopelessly out from behind a barred window. The caption read: “No Way Out: Romanian Gavrila Moldovan Risked His Life to Come to America. The INS Promptly Locked Him Up on Terminal Island. Three and a Half Years Later, He’s Still in Jail.” The accompanying story described Moldovan’s desperate flight out of Romania after being declared a “noncitizen” for writing an anti-government news article, which rendered him vulnerable to immediate arrest, and after his parents died in a suspicious car “accident.” Having slipped aboard a container ship bound for the United States together with some fellow countrymen (three of whom died en route), he was discovered and unceremoniously dumped ashore in Panama, only to stow away shortly thereafter on another container ship headed for the Port of Los Angeles. After finally reaching his destination, a “euphoric” Moldovan explained to the US authorities awaiting him at the port: “I come here to be in freedom.... ’” His “welcome” consisted of being arrested and locked up in the INS Processing Center on Terminal Island, in which, though never charged with any crime, he remained for several years before being transferred to Kern County Jail in Bakersfield, where he is currently languishing amongst a population of men awaiting trial for serious crimes (6-7)—one of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have been, and continue to be, incarcerated in prisons that have contracts with the INS, for lack of proper documents, for minor infringements of the law, or because they are denied political asylum despite compelling evidence of their vulnerability to government reprisal at home.

Ending War, Building Peace

2011 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Innocent People ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Decisions

The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq led to more than a million people being killed, displaced five million from their homes and shattered countless more lives. It was a colossal, premeditated war crime. Leaders of governments in the countries responsible for this enormity seek to minimise and forget about it: to ‘move on’. We must not let them, because they want to retain the option of making the same political decisions, condemning more innocent people to death, somewhere else in the future. Contributors to this book are united in saying: never again. They examine how and why this unmitigated disaster for humanity was allowed to happen, and how we can prevent it being repeated. And they imagine more peaceful ways to engage with conflicts and crises in times to come. It raises a question: what will you do to help end war and build peace?

Judeo-Christian democracy and the Transatlantic Right: Travels of a contested civilizational imaginary

2021 ◽  
pp. 2336825X2110529
Author(s):  
Vibeke Schou Tjalve
Keyword(s):  
State Power ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
The Us

“Judeo-Christian civilization” and “Christian democracy” have emerged as darling far Right tropes, seemingly uniting radical conservatives in the US and Europe behind a single, geopolitical imaginary. This article presents a brief political-conceptual story of how “Judeo-Christianity” and “Christian democracy” became a rhetorical meeting ground for radical conservatives across the Atlantic. But it also sheds light on why deep, historical, intellectual, and ethnographic divides beneath, make those grounds highly unstable terrain. Divides not only between European and American traditions of liberalism and conservatism but also between the experiences and practices of state power that inform them. Beneath the slogans of Christian democracy espoused in such disparate contexts as Charlottesville and Budapest, move different legacies, memories, enemies.

Secrecy, State-Private Networks and Operational Effectiveness in Cold War Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-560
Author(s):  
ERIC PULLIN
Keyword(s):  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Operational Effectiveness ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Us ◽  
Long Time ◽  
To Come ◽  
Us Senate

Secrecy has unintended consequences. The release on 9 December 2014 of the US Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the torture of terrorism detainees focused public attention on the secret activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Regrettably, lost amidst debate over justifying or condemning state-sponsored torture is a more basic concern, the issue of state secrecy, which underlies the discussion of how governments promote national ends. Only two days after the issuance of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, the US House of Representatives adjourned without taking action on the Freedom of Information Act reform bill – despite receiving unanimous approval in both houses. This bill would not have required complete openness, but it would have eliminated many of the arbitrary mechanisms that enable the CIA and other governmental agencies to suppress requests for information. Although the House Republican leadership failed to put the act on the legislative calendar, the Obama administration's Department of Justice also deserves opprobrium for surreptitiously opposing the act behind the scenes. The US government's disregard for establishing reasonable rules of transparency virtually guarantees that the CIA will continue to suppress its records, and thus public scrutiny of its unchecked activities, for a very long time to come.

Japan and the Revolution in Military Affairs

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-196
Author(s):  
Tom Le
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Future ◽  
Revolution In Military Affairs ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Self Defence ◽  
The Revolution

The Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) has not only changed how the USA engages in warfare but also how it maintains its military supremacy and how other nations budget and strategize. The very idea of the RMA has impacted how nations manage their technological advantages and raises the questions of can the RMA be monopolized and if not, which nations can adopt their own RMA? In September 2000, the Japan Defence Agency (now the Ministry of Defence [MOD]) produced a report titled ‘“Info-RMA”: Study on Info-RMA and the Future of the Self-Defence Forces’ to explore the prospects of implementing RMA principles in the Japan Self-Defence Forces. In this article, I explore to what extent can RMA principles be implemented in the Self-Defence Forces? I argue that although several significant changes have been implemented in technology, doctrine, operations and organization, various normative and technical constraints have directed the MOD to craft an RMA with Japanese characteristics, emphasizing defence and interconnectedness with the US armed forces. These findings suggest that current efforts to ‘normalize’ the Self-Defence Forces can succeed if crafted to appeal to the sensibilities of the Japanese public.

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