From 'Sovereignty as Responsibility' to the 'Responsibility to Protect'

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 353-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Deng
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Nation State

AbstractThis essay examines the origins and evolution of the concepts of 'sovereignty as responsibility' and the 'responsibility to protect'. In particular, it considers the role and duty of states and how ideas of sovereignty have evolved since the modern nation-state was conceived by the European Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. It then examines the responsibility of states towards their own citizens and traces the development of the R2P norm in Africa as it has related to conflict prevention, management, and resolution since the end of the Cold War. The essay further considers the responsibilities of national democratic governments in Africa and beyond. Recent developments that have widened the scope and helped the acceptance and application of the concept of 'sovereignty as responsibility' are discussed, and the essay concludes with an examination of the accountability and enforcement challenges faced by R2P.

The New Knight: The French Far Right’s View of the Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Stéphane François
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Political Model ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Modern Nation State ◽  
The Middle Ages

The far right has always taken an interest in the Middle Ages. For the French revolutionary far right, which shares an ideological matrix influenced by Julius Evola, fascination with the Middle Ages revolves around the image of the Holy Germanic Roman Empire as a political model for Europe opposed to the modern nation-state. The romantic image of the medieval knight also offers a watered-down way to celebrate and legitimize violence without having to allude to a taboo National Socialism. This obsession with the Middle Ages contrasts with the reality that these revolutionary far-right movements were rather pro-Arab during the Cold War decades. This shift reveals the transformation of their thinking and the new dominance of the Identitarian notion of ethnic withdrawal, with the knight as the symbol of a pure racial warrior defending his society against Muslim invasion.

Comparative Area Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
International Context ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Cross Area Studies ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Area studies have undergone significant changes over the last two decades. They have been transformed from mostly descriptive accounts in the international context of the Cold War to theory-oriented and methodological analytical approaches. More recent comparative methods such as “Qualitative Comparative Analysis” (QCA) and related approaches, which are particularly suitable for medium N studies, have significantly contributed to this development. This essay discusses the epistemological background of this approach as well as recent developments. It provides two examples of current “cross area studies,” one concerned with successful democratic transformations across four regions (Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and East Asia), the other with political participation in marginalized settlements in four countries (Brazil, Chile, Ivory Coast, Kenya) in a multilevel analysis. The conclusion points to the theoretical promises of this approach and its practical-political relevance.

Impacts of Culture and Cultural Differences on Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding in Multicultural Societies

2020 ◽  
pp. 177-198
Author(s):  
Victor Ikechukwu Ogharanduku ◽  
Adekunle Theophilus Tinuoye
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Violent Conflicts ◽  
Different Cultures

Multicultural societies have become sites of violent conflicts following predictions at the end of the Cold War that culture would be a causative of future conflict. However, conflicts have not necessarily been caused by the presence of the different cultures that inhabit these communities, but cultural differences in these societies is observed to become embedded in conflict dynamics inducing escalation, aiding the easy mobilisation and motivation of conflict parties to utilise violence, eventually inducing intractability. Cultural differences impact conflict prevention and peacebuilding in multicultural settings by constituting a barrier and a times instigating failures of these processes. At the same time, it is a culture resource that can be harnessed for conflict prevention and peacebuilding if it is well understood, but its impacts seems less well understood. Successful conflict prevention and peacebuilding in multicultural societies is tied to in-depth understanding of cultural differences.

Through a Glass Darkly: Looking at Conflict Prevention, Management, and Termination. By Stephen J. Cimbala. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. 224p. $65.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 680-681
Author(s):  
Joseph B. Underhill-Cady
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
World Order ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
American Empire ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Clash Of Civilizations ◽  
Arms Races ◽  
Post September 11 ◽  
The Cold War

One test of a book is how well it weathers major developments in world events, and, as with the end of the Cold War, the beginning of the new war on terrorism presents recent publications in international or military affairs with the danger of untimely relegation to the trash bin of history. After September 11, as we scramble to adjust and make sense of the “hunt for Osama,” Stephen Cimbala's work, however, remains a useful compendium of lessons from several recent wars, crises, and ongoing military challenges. Although the book is not as suddenly relevant as Samuel Huntington's (1998) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order or Chalmers Johnson's (2001) Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, the wisdom distilled within it is sound enough to apply equally well to the pre- and post-September 11 worlds. It is largely rooted in frameworks developed for studying the Cold War and superpower arms races, but Cimbala's examination of the new realities of military strategy and technology still has much to say about the war being waged in Afghanistan and the campaigns that are likely to follow.

scholarly journals Field Diplomacy: A New Conflict Prevention Paradigm?

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Reychler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
The North ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Religious Extremism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Very High

One of the most important challenges facing the global community in the next decade, is the prevention of destructive conflicts. Listening to the discourse in the United Nations and other governmental and non governmental organizations this may sound like kicking in wide open doors (Bauwens and Reychler, 1994). But the failure of conflict prevention and the high number of conflict zones, indicates that we still have a long way to go. A global survey of contemporary conflicts counts 22 high-intensity and 39 lowerintensity conflicts, and 40 serious disputes (PIOOM, 1995). In 1995 five groups were victims of genocides or politicides. The risks of future victimization of 47 communities in different parts of the world is assessed as high of very high (PIOOM, 1995). The growth of nationalist feelings at the end of the Cold War is only the beginning of more suffering. More conflicts are expected, with old and new causes, such as the unequal or unfair trade balances between North and South, unemployment in the North, the environmental pollution, religious extremism, mass immigration and the growing number of failed states. These problems could hurt people so much that they would be prepared to fight for them.

Reconfiguring the Un System of Collective Security

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Blokker
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Peace Operations ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
International Panel ◽  
Un Peacekeeping ◽  
Nuclear Security ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines pacific settlement and collective security as the primary instruments of the United Nations for promoting and underwriting international security. It begins by focusing on the development of newer approaches to UN-centred collective security in the new millennium in response to increased security threats. The chapter discusses economic sanctions, consent-based peacekeeping, robust peace operations, the coercive responsibility to protect (R2P), and nuclear security. In particular, it considers the evolution of peacekeeping side by side with preventive diplomacy, as well as the increase in the number of UN operations after the end of the Cold War to resolve outstanding conflicts. It also evaluates the report prepared by Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, chair of a high-level international panel appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to make recommendations for changes in UN peacekeeping. The chapter concludes by considering the shift from collective security to global governance.

The Politics of Mnemonics: History in the Debate over Taiwan's Status

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Steve Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Taiwan Strait ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractWith the retreat of the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) from mainland China to Taiwan in the late 1940s, the island seemed destined to be part of another nation divided by the Cold War—superficially similar to Germany and Korea. The Chinese Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on the mainland, while the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) moved its government, the Republic of China (ROC), to Taiwan. It followed, then, that reconciliation between the two would unite both sides of the Taiwan Strait under one nation-state. Much has changed since those early years of the Cold War, however. The Communists have embraced capitalism, most nations have established relations with the PRC while cutting ties to the ROC, and it is difficult to discern whether the Nationalists are devoted to a Chinese or to a Taiwanese nation.1 Despite

scholarly journals A Consciousness of Streets: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Partition

2016 ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Political Modernity ◽  
Border Politics ◽  
Benedict Anderson ◽  
Modern Nation State

This largely speculative review historicises the current era of ‘Springs’ through the lens of partition. I offer a critique of political modernity and the modern nation-state through analysis of the turn to border politics in colonial conquests, decolonisation efforts, Cold War politics and other instances of international relations across the long twentieth century. The pervasiveness of such plans across late modernity marks the beginning of the end of the nation as a single, reifiable, imaginable structure. With Ireland as exemplar, I posit national dividedness —a generally underestimated paradigm shaping our time— as spurring a decline in state authority and a new, radical “consciousness of streets.” Together with other defining political structures, it participates in transforming the postmodern map of nation into a conflicted network, an imagined community as metropolitan circuit. I take recourse to theories of partition and nation and work by geographers, historians and postcolonial theorists including Joseph Cleary, Benedict Anderson, Monica Duffy Toft, Étienne Balibar and Michel Foucault.

scholarly journals Violence today

2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-267
Author(s):  
Michel Wieviorka
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Nuclear Physics ◽  
Industrial Structure ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Cold War

In this paper, the author seeks to approach contemporary violence in its most different expressions, including the use of the most recent developments in biology, bacteriology, chemistry and nuclear physics. The central idea is that violence changes, and with it the way it is perceived and how we react to it. The text, besides putting violence into a historical context, analyzes 1) the big transformation(s) in the world: the end of the cold war, the new industrial structure and its consequences for the decline of the labor movement, globalization and the new forms of victimization; 2) in the second part, the author points to new approaches and characterizes novel contemporary subjects.

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