The (Arrested) Development of UK Special Forces and the Global War on Terror

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 971-982 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALASTAIR FINLAN

AbstractThe use of force in international relations by the West is increasingly witnessing a greater reliance on Special Forces. This trend has profound implications for state action because Special Forces represent a very different kind of soldier and they possess the inherent ability to transgress traditional boundaries in peace and war. The development and participation of UK Special Forces in the Global War on Terror provides a microcosm of the positive and negative dimensions of using secret military units as the force of choice against insurgents and terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and indeed on the streets of London.

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-197
Author(s):  
Dean Cooper-Cunningham

Feminist scholars have provided important analyses of the gendered and racialised discourses used to justify the Global War on Terror. They show how post-9/11 policies were made possible through particular binary constructions of race, gender, and national identity in official discourse. Turning to popular culture, this article uses a Queer feminist poststructuralist approach to look at the ways that Ms. Marvel comics destabilise and contest those racialised and gendered discourses. Specifically, it explores how Ms. Marvel provides a reading of race, gender, and national identity in post-9/11 USA that challenges gendered-racialised stereotypes. Providing a Queer reading of Ms. Marvel that undermines the coherence of Self/Other binaries, the article concludes that to write, draw, and circulate comics and the politics they depict is a way of intervening in international relations that imbues comics with the power to engage in dialogue with and (re)shape systems of racialised-gendered domination and counter discriminatory legislation. Dibujando miedo a la diferencia: raza, género e identidad nacional en Ms. Marvel Comics


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen

This chapter reviews the historical and theoretical lessons highlighted by the book. It shows how disorganization and discord in alliance politics has made the maintenance of peace through coercive diplomacy in Asia very difficult. It considers two separate sets of dynamics among enemy alliances that carry theoretically important lessons for the study of international relations. The first set of dynamics relate to alliance coordination, problems of burden-sharing within an alliance, and unclear signaling in an alliance's coercive diplomacy. The second set of dynamics involves potentially differential levels of devotion to specific revisionist conflicts. The chapter concludes with a discussion of other cases of alliance disunity and conflict escalation to which the theoretical approaches offered here might apply, including pan-Arabism and the Six Day War of 1967, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, and the global war on terror.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUIZA ODYSSEOS ◽  
FABIO PETITO

In this piece we introduce and contextualize the contributions to the special focus on the international theory of Carl Schmitt, and argue that Carl Schmitt's much neglected international thought can provide scholars of both international relations and international law with a new common multidisciplinary research platform pivotal in thinking about the present international predicaments of crisis in international order and legitimacy, of contested liberal hegemony, and of the issue of unipolarity and the emergence of new forms of warfare, such as terrorism and the ‘global war on terror’.


Author(s):  
Lauren Benton

While the other chapters in Part III focus on Europe and its ‘semi-periphery’, Lauren Benton turns to the justification of imperial violence within the periphery: in response to urgent calls to protect imperial subjects across the nineteenth-century world, European imperial agents were authorized to use force at their discretion and instructed to avoid the outbreak of new, full-scale wars. Imperial agents drew from well-established practices of protection and possession in framing justifications for small-scale, sporadic violence. Their efforts gave expression to a perpetual right of empires to use violence to promote order in pluri-political regions of overlapping and uncertain sovereignties. This chapter illustrates these patterns by examining interpolity conflicts in one Pacific region and the strategies of British navy captains. The case suggests that understanding nineteenth-century legalities of imperial violence can be useful to the analysis of justifications of episodic use of force in later periods, including periodic attacks by international hegemons in the global ‘war on terror’.


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fuad Fanani

The global war on terror that was started after 11/9 tragedy has continued until<br />to date. The global war on terror not only shaped the new political balance in the<br />international world, but also influenced the relationships between the U.S. and<br />Western countries with Muslims countries and Muslims around the world. This is<br />because the war on terror has positioned Islam and Muslims in negative image<br />as the serious threat to the West. Many people stated that the 11/9 tragedy is the<br />evidence of “the clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West. As a result,<br />some observers argue that the war on terror is the war against Islam based on<br />the clash of civilizations thesis. However, others rebut this argument by explaining<br />the facts that many Islamic countries supported to the war on terror. In fact,<br />Islam has many schools of thought and cannot be understood in single understanding.<br />Importantly, Islamic extremist movements are not the mainstream group<br />in Muslims societies. This article will examine the relationship between the war<br />on terror and the clash of civilizations thesis. It also assesses the Islamic world<br />and Muslims response toward this agenda. It will argue that the war on terror is not war against Islam, but the war against terrorist groups and radical Muslims<br />which often hijacked Islam.<br />Perang global atas teror yang diprakarsai Amerika Serikat sebagai tanggapan<br />terhadap tragedi 11 September 2011 terus berlanjut hingga hari ini. Diskursus ini<br />tidak hanya memengaruhi keseimbangan politik dalam percaturan international,<br />namun juga mempunyai dampak yang signifikan terhadap relasi antara Islam<br />dan Barat. Hal ini karena Islam dan kaum Muslim ditempatkan pada posisi yang<br />negatif dan menjadi ancaman nyata terhadap Barat. Berkaitan dengan itu,<br />masyarakat banyak yang mempercayai bahwa tragedi 11 September adalah bukti<br />nyata dari tesis “benturan peradaban” antara Islam dan Barat. Dalam hal ini,<br />banyak pengamat juga meyakini bahwa the global war on terror adalah perang<br />melawan Islam berdasarkan analisis benturan peradaban. Namun, sebagian<br />pengamat membantah bahwa perang ini adalah perang melawan Islam dengan<br />menunjukkan bukti banyak negara Muslim yang bergabung dengan agenda ini. Di<br />samping itu, Islam juga mempunyai banyak mazhab pemikiran dan tidak bisa<br />dipahami menjadi hanya satu pemahaman. Gerakan Islam ekstremis pun, tidak<br />menjadi arus utama dalam masyarakat Islam. Artikel ini akan menganalisis<br />hubungan antara the global ar on terror dan benturan antarperadaban. Juga<br />akan dibahas respon dunia Islam dan masyarakat Muslim terhadap agenda global<br />ini. Berkaitan dengan itu, artikel ini akan berargumen bahwa the global war<br />on terror bukanlah perang melawan Islam, namun perang melawan teroris dan<br />Muslim radikal yang seringkali membajak Islam.


2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-600 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN WILLIAMS

AbstractThis article contributes to current debates about Just War by analysing an insufficiently recognised problem with the way Just War theorists have responded to the two principal challenges surrounding the ethics of violence in international relations since the end of the Cold War – humanitarian intervention and the ‘global war on terror’. The problem focuses on strongly embedded assumptions that exist in contemporary Just War debates about the nature and meaning of territory. The article argues that Just War needs to engage more systematically with challenges to dominant ‘Westphalian’ framings of territory, space and scale in order to contribute more effectively to important ethical debates about the use of violence in international relations.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice A. Alfano ◽  
Jessica Balderas ◽  
Simon Lau ◽  
Brian E. Bunnell ◽  
Deborah C. Beidel

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail B. Calkin

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