Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kevin Duong

This chapter introduces redemptive violence and situates its appeal in a paradox intrinsic to modern revolutionary democracy: enthroning the people as sovereign came at the price of dissolving them into a multitude of abstract individuals. It focuses readers’ attention on redemptive violence in nineteenth-century French thought, outlines the structure of the book, and formalizes the book’s main claims. It shows why this book’s argument forces us to rethink inherited accounts of political violence, especially those generated during the Cold War. Where liberal antitotalitarian critics have drawn teleological connections between redemptive violence and totalitarianism, this chapter resists those connections to invite readers to consider what redemptive violence can reveal about democracy.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.


Author(s):  
Davide Rodogno

This book examines the European roots of humanitarian intervention as a concept and international practice during the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the politics and policies of Great Britain and France. It challenges two assumptions: first, that humanitarian intervention is a phenomenon of international relations that appeared after the end of the Cold War and second, that it emerged abruptly during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Ottoman Empire, the book investigates when, where, who, how, and for what reasons a humanitarian intervention was undertaken from 1815 to 1914. It argues that the primary motivation of humanitarian intervention is to end massacre, atrocity, and extermination or to prevent the repetition of such events, to protect civilian populations mistreated and unprotected by the target-state government, agents, or authorities. This introduction discusses the concept of rights, including natural rights, before the nineteenth century and provides an overview of the questions, assumptions, and issues raised in the book.


Author(s):  
Rob Ruck

Though the Cold War ripped apart the almost century-long sporting connection between Cuba and the United States, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) color line and interference in Cuban and Mexican baseball had already stressed this relationship to the breaking point. The Cuban Revolution triggered the island nation’s final departure from the sporting empire that MLB had created and opened the way for the Dominican Republic to become the most important source of talent in professional baseball. Cuba, however, set its own course, building a noncommercial alternative in which sport became a right of the people and a means of statecraft.


Balcanica ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 325-346
Author(s):  
Milos Kovic

The end of the Cold War has brought about a complete change of the political and social context in the world. Consequently, history, as a scholarly discipline, has also undergone a significant transformation. In this broader context, with the destruction of Yugoslavia, the interpretations of the Serbian nineteenth century have been experiencing a far-reaching revision. It is necessary, therefore, to scrutinize the main topics of the debate on nineteenth-century Serbian history in recent world historiography, as well as to examine the main causes of this academic revision.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-89
Author(s):  
Adie Edward Ugbada

Democracy as a concept of government became universal after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, the disbanding of the USSR in 1991, the crumple of communism and the end of the Cold War. Ever since then, this global phenomenon called democracy became the central and most preferred system of government worldwide. It has also been embraced in its entirety though in some cases modified based on the dominant/peculiar cultural and political structure of the people till this present day; except of course for a very few and negligible number of countries that have fervidly refused to embrace it as the best means of leading a people. This pervasive acceptance is predicated on two key elements- which are; globalization and the media. Though the concept of globalization is shrouded in strong arguments between a school of thought known as the skeptics and the other school of the argument known as the globalizers, McLuhan’s Global Village postulation unraveled this controversy by a simple analogy which links the media as the vehicle with which the concept was made popular and acceptable to the clinch of a large followership. In a symbiotic reward, the media was able to carry out its function of news dissemination in democracy, due to higher information technology occasioned by the consequences of globalization. Despite this advantage, the Nigeria democratic experience is one that has not been able to draw from the advantages herein. The country’s democracy is been overwhelmed by different challenges that has affected its emergence since the country attained independence in 1960. However happening in the 2015 general elections portend a ray of hope for the growth of democracy in the country after which it can then shift its efforts to the consolidation of its democracy.


Author(s):  
Achim Wennmann

The political economy of violent conflict is a body of literature that investigates how economic issues and interests shape the dynamics associated to violent conflict after the Cold War. The literature covers an area of research focusing on civil wars—the predominant type of conflict in the 1990s and early 2000s—and an area of research focusing on other types of violent conflict within states, such as permanent emergencies, criminal violence, and political violence associated to turbulent transitions. The first area involves four themes that have come to characterize discussions on the political economy of civil wars, including research on the role of greed and grievance in conflict onset, on economic interests in civil wars, on the nature of conflict economies, and on conflict financing. The second area responds to the evolution of violent conflict beyond the categories of “interstate” or “civil” war and shows how political economy research adapted to new types of violent conflict within states as it moved beyond the “post-Cold War” era. Overall, the literature on the political economy of violence conflict emphasizes the role of informal systems behind power, profits and violence, and the economic interests and functions of violence underlying to violent conflict. It has also become a conceptual laboratory for scholars who after years of field research tried to make sense of the realities of authoritarian, violent or war-affected countries. By extending the boundaries of the literature beyond the study of civil wars after the Cold War, political economy research can serve as an important analytical lens to better understand the constantly evolving nature of violent conflict and to inform sober judgment on the possible policy responses to them.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-297
Author(s):  
Daniela Richterova

The scholarly understanding of communist state surveillance practices remains limited. Utilising thousands of recently declassified archival materials from communist Czechoslovakia, this article aims to revise our understanding of everyday security practices and surveillance under communist regimes, which have thus far been overwhelmingly understood in relation to the domestic population and social control. In the 1970s and 1980s, Czechoslovakia attracted the Cold War terrorist and revolutionary elite. Visits by the likes of Carlos the Jackal, Munich Olympic massacre mastermind Abu Daoud, and key PLO figures in Prague were closely surveilled by the Czechoslovak State Security (StB). This article investigates the motifs and performance of a wide range of mechanisms that the StB utilised to surveil violent non-state actors, including informer networks and SIGINT. It argues that in the last decade of the Cold War, Prague adopted a “surveillance-centred” approach to international terrorists on its territory—arguably enabled by informal “non-aggression pacts.” Furthermore, it challenges the notion that the communist state security structures were omnipotent surveillance mechanisms. Despite having spent decades perfecting their grip on domestic dissent, when confronted with foreign, unfamiliar, and uncontrollable non-state actors engaged in terrorism or political violence, these ominous institutions were often shown to be anxious, inept, and at times impotent. Finally, it explores the parallel state approaches to international terrorists and revolutionaries, and their shortcomings, across the Iron Curtain jurisdictions. Overall, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the broad and varied complexities of intelligence and surveillance in communist regimes.


Author(s):  
Vania Markarian ◽  
Eric Zolov ◽  
Laura Pérez Carrara

This book examines the creation of new conceptions of youth and politics during the Cold War era by focusing on the case of Uruguay in the 1960s. In this decade, a generation of Latin American youth entered political life inspired by a heroic view of activism that coincided, often contentiously, with the spread of new cultural trends from youth movements in Europe and United States. The Uruguayan case shows a series of distinctive features which can help us rethink the significance of similar Cold War processes in the region and across the globe. This study analyzes the Uruguayan student movement of 1968 through a close examination of the intellectual debates, ideological schisms, and social representations that shaped the positions of leftist groups and fueby building on earlier discussions about how to achieve revolutionary change in Uruguay and the region as a whole. By exploring the intersection of activism, political violence, and youth culture, this book opens new insights on categories such as the 哲‎ew


Author(s):  
Jim Millhorn

The French Revolution is clearly defined as a benchmark event of the modern era. It remains the revolution by which all others are measured. Any discussion of political and social ideology, sovereignty, or nationality hark back to forces unleashed by the French Revolution. Nineteenth-century Europe, not France alone, was haunted by memories of the Revolution. As the century advanced, however, the new ideologies of liberalism, conservatism and socialism coalesced and developed their own identities independent of the Revolution. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia generated a renewed interest in the concept of revolution that lasted throughout the Cold War. At the dawn of the twenty-first century the French Revolution remains a subject of relentless analysis, yet at the same time its philosophical heritage has increasingly been called into question.


Author(s):  
James F. Goode

This chapter discusses in general terms the origins of the arms embargo imposed on Turkey in 1974, emphasizing both the controversy over opium and the invasion of Cyprus. It also briefly relates the history of US-Turkey relations from the arrival of American missionaries and traders in the early nineteenth century to the advent of the Cold War. It explains the significance of the infamous Johnson letter of 1964. It concludes with the author’s reflections on a visit to a tense Cyprus in the summer of 1969.


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