Conceptualizing Sexual Violence in Post–Cold War Global Conflicts

2020 ◽  
pp. 726-745
Author(s):  
Dubravka Zarkov
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Abu Ghraib Prison ◽  
Inherent Part

Recent scholarship conceptualizes sexual violence as an inherent part of war violence, but emphasizes its varying pattern across conflicts, armed groups, and small units. However, some cases of sexual violence in war have remained invisible within both feminist and mainstream academia and politics, while others have been overexposed. This imbalance has received more attention in feminist scholarship only since the millennium. The chapter analyses the debates on sexual violence in the post–Cold War global conflicts. It argues that the wartime rapes of women in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and, to some extent, Rwanda and the sexual violence against men at the Abu Ghraib prison during the second Iraq War have stimulated major shifts in feminist theorizing of sexual violence against women and men in war. It also discusses the repercussions of the most common conceptualization of sexual violence in war and reflects the theoretical challenges of the conceptualization of sexual violence against men.

Guardian of Pax Transatlantica

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-67
Author(s):  
Jussi M. Hanhimäki
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Building Block ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Basic Building Block ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Security Actor ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter focuses on NATO, the institutional core of Pax Transatlantica. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has enlarged its membership and ventured beyond its immediate neighborhood. Its significance as a security actor has been enhanced, not least because of the actions of the Russian Federation in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria. By 2020, NATO was bigger and more engaged than ever before, with military capacities that dwarfed those of any of its real or potential adversaries. Yet, the success story was hampered by widespread pessimism about NATO’s future on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the post–Cold War era had seen numerous inter-alliance crises: the Iraq War of 2003 being the most obvious example. Nevertheless, three decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, NATO retained its function as the basic building block of Pax Transatlantica.

scholarly journals The Clash of Civilizations? Statistical Evidence from Armed Conflicts, 1989-2015

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Afa'anwi Che
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
Regression Tests

Do armed conflicts in the contemporary post-Cold War period reflect a clash of civilizations (CoC) as predicted by Samuel Huntington? This study substantially broadens and temporally extends the scope of major extant quantitative tests of the CoC thesis by assessing not only interactions among states but also interactions between states and non-state armed groups, from 1989 to 2015. Based on Chi-square and logistic regression tests, this study does not find empirical support for the CoC thesis as a basis for adopting foreign policies of civilizational containment.

Down but not out? The Kurds in international politics

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUISE FAWCETT
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Headline News ◽  
Kurdish Issue

The capacity of the Kurds—a scattered, divided and stateless people—to make headline news never ceases to astonish. Perhaps most sensational were the extraordinary events early in 1999 which accompanied the seizure in Kenya and subsequent extradition to Turkey of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish Workers Party, with its now familiar acronym, the PKK. Ocalan's arrest, and his sentencing to death by a Turkish court in June 1999, are only the most recent in a series of Kurdish-related events that have captured the imagination of the international public. The post-Cold War period alone has witnessed the massacre, by chemical weapons, of Kurdish villagers in Iraq after the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88) and a failed Kurdish uprising and massive refugee crisis after the Gulf War (1991), to be followed by the creation of a Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. In 1992, far away in Berlin, which saw some particularly ugly scenes at the time of Ocalan's capture, three Iranian Kurdish opposition leaders were murdered. So significant has been the Kurdish imprint on the contemporary International Relations agenda, that some have suggested that the Kurdish issue today can be likened in some respects to that of Palestine.

scholarly journals The Origins of Transnational Alliances: Rulers, Rebels, and Political Survival in the Congo Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Tamm
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
External Support ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Made In

Despite their catastrophic proportions, the Congo Wars have received little attention from international relations scholars. At the heart of these conflicts were alliances between rebel groups and neighboring rulers. What are the origins of such transnational alliances, which have been a major feature of nearly all civil wars in post–Cold War Africa? Recent scholarship on external support for rebel groups does not offer a clear answer, either providing long lists of the goals that state sponsors may have or avoiding the question of motives altogether. A focus on political survival reveals that African rulers form alliances with rebels in nearby states to reduce the threats of rebellions and military coups that the rulers themselves face at home. Transnational alliances serve either to weaken a ruler's domestic enemies by undermining their foreign sponsors or to ensure the continued allegiance of key domestic supporters by providing them with opportunities for enrichment. Case studies of the alliance decisions made in the two Congo Wars by the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe show that their struggles for political survival account for why they sided either with their Congolese counterparts or with Congolese rebels.

The effect of sexual violence on negotiated outcomes in civil conflicts

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany S Chu ◽  
Jessica Maves Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Civil Conflicts

Combatants used sexual violence in approximately half of all civil conflicts since 1989. We expect that when groups resort to sexual violence they are organizationally vulnerable, unlikely to win, and as such they are inclined to salvage something from the conflict by way of a settlement. Using quantitative analysis of data on civil conflicts in the post-Cold War period, we find that a higher prevalence of sexual violence perpetrated by government forces precipitates negotiated outcomes. This is particularly true in contexts where both government and rebel forces utilize comparable levels of wartime rape and other forms of sexual abuse.

scholarly journals Feminists against Sexual Violence in War: The Question of Perpetrators and Victims Revisited

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Korac
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
Political Act ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
Women In War

This article reflects upon feminist activism and analyses of sexual victimisation of women in war during the 1990s. It critically examines the reasons for the continuation of this type of violence against women, despite its recognition as a war crime; the recognition that marked one of the significant achievements of feminist activism during the last decade of the 20th century. The discussion points to the centrality of sexual violence in war for the system of gender based violence (GBV) against both women and men in war. It argues that a relational understanding of the gendered processes of victimisation in war is critical. This approach enables an acknowledgement that sexual violence in war and rape, as one of its expressions, is a violent political act that is highly gendered both in its causes and consequences, and, as such, it affects both women and men. This article provides an overall argument for the need of feminist scholarship and activism to engage with these differently situated experiences and practices of victimisation in war, to ‘unmake’ it.

Reconstructing Turkish-American relations: Divergences versus convergences

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 125-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Aydın
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Strategic Partnership ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe Turkish-American relationship experienced the most difficult period of its history after the refusal of the Turkish Parliament on 1 March 2003 to allow US troops to open a northern front to Iraq from Turkish territory. By the time a new administration took power in Washington in early 2009, the badly damaged relationship had recovered somewhat and recently has even taken a positive turn. Although the parameters of the recovered relationship are not yet clear, by analyzing the intricacies of diverging and converging worldviews and interests of the two states in the post-Cold War era, one can understand what happened to the strategic partnership of the 1990s and how Turkish-American relations may develop in the future. Accordingly, this paper will first look at the constraints and limitations of the current relationship through diverging interests and contextual viewpoints in the post-Iraq War world. It will then highlight the areas of convergence that existed even during the lowest point of the relationship. Finally, I will argue that, while the strategic partnership may have ended, a strategic relationship between the two states will continue to exist and may even produce a newer form of connection and cooperation, the contours of which will also be outlined for the coming years, taking into account the opportunities and hurdles ahead.

scholarly journals The Vital Center Reborn: Redefining Liberalism between 9/11 and the Iraq War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Joseph Stieb
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Policy Paradigm ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Universal Values

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a set of liberal intellectuals promoted a vision of liberal renewal at home and abroad, hoping to create a new political and foreign policy paradigm. They sought to revive a form of early Cold War “Vital Center” liberalism by supporting democratization and human rights, designing a liberal version of patriotism, and supporting confrontations with illiberal autocracies and radical Islamists. They hoped to reverse decades of liberal decline in domestic politics, to distance themselves from the political left, and to critique President George Bush's response to 9/11, which they viewed as unilateralist, militaristic, and intellectually vapid. This revival of optimistic, universalist liberalism represents the peak of liberals’ post–Cold War belief in the ability of U.S. power to spread presumably universal values. The failure of the Iraq War, which many of these thinkers supported, undermined this brief project and returned liberals to a more cautious, defensive mindset.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document