Review Essay: Enlightenment Lost?

Lost Enlightenment and Polymaths of Islam, each analyzing a different but linked period of Central Asian civilization, is each a masterwork of scholarship. Each author, now at a different stage in his academic career, has put to good use a bevy of languages to unveil the achievements of societies and ways of life smothered by the Sturm und Drang of life including great power aggressions. S. Frederick Starr has led Soviet as well as Central Asian research institutes based in Washington, D.C. He was the first director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and later the founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, now affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Institute. James Pickett is Assistant Professor of Eurasian History at the University of Pittsburgh. Each author has done research in Russia and Central Asia.

NEGARA DAN KEMANUSIAAN: SEBUAH ESAI REFLEKSI

Tulisan ini adalah sebuah esai politik yang mendiskusikan negara dan masalah kemanusiaan dalam perspektif ilmu hubungan internasional. Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam esai ini adalah pendekatan reflektif. Adapun, dalam ilmu hubungan internasional, negara adalah suatu konsep tentang entitas politik yang diakui keberadaaannya untuk menjalankan fungsi dan tujuan kepentingannya. Sedangkan, kemanusiaan adalah suatu konsep moral dan filosofis yang menjadi salah satu pijakan masyarakat modern. Tulisan ini hendak menelusuri hubungan reflektif antara negara dan kemanusiaan dalam dua pandangan utama dalam ilmu hubungan internasional yakni realisme dan liberalisme. Berdasarkan pembahasan dari tulisan esai ini disimpulkan bahwa kemanusiaan berada pada ujung tanduk kekuasaan negara atau aliansi negara. Sejauh negara menjadi unit-sentris sistem internasional, sejauh itu juga kita tidak mampu keluar dari jebakan-jebakan regularitas internasional yang anarkhis. Maka, sudah semestinya kita memikirkan jalan keluar bagi pembebasan kemanusiaan di luar batas konsepsi negara-wetphalian. Hal ini dikarenakan dunia jauh lebih kompleks dari esai ini. Sama kompleksnya pandangan tentang negara dan kemanusiaan disisi lain. Namun, yang terus berlanjut dan ditatap dengan optimisme sejauh kita memiliki keyakinan bahwa demokrasi dan institusi liberal-internasional (seperti LBB dan PBB) seperti dinyatakan Woodrow Wilson adalah tahapan sejarah lainnya, bukan percobaan sebagai usaha mencapai perdamaian abadi (The perpetual peace).

POVIJESNI RAZVOJ PRAVA NA SAMOODREĐENJE IZMEĐU DVA RATA - LENJIN VS. WILSON

The end of the two great world wars and the disappearance of the current political regimes have resulted in the creation of new states in the international order. With the collapse of multinational states and awakening of national consciousness, the aspirations of peoples for their own national states started to appear. Requirements for self-determination resulted primarily from the decolonization process, but also as a reflection of political relations in the post-war Europe. At the end of the First World War, there were events and people contributing to the development of rights of the people to self-determination and helping the oppressed nations in achieving their aspirations to decide their own destiny within their own national states. On the one hand, there were the workers’ self-determination and revolution in Russia as essential elements in the development of the right to self-determination in the political principle and Lenin's attitudes on self-determination. On the other hand, there were fourteen points and US President Woodrow Wilson with his views on the right to self-determination.

Who is Right, Who is Wrong? Interpreting 14 Points of Wilson – A Case Study of Deontic Modals and their Meanings

The document titled “14 points of Wilson” was announced by the President of the United States Woodrow Wilson in his speech addressed to the United States Congress on 8th January 1918. The speech is one of the most well known documents of the First World War as it touched upon several world issues. The text has been interpreted ever since in respect to the importance and real meaning of points formulated by Wilson. One of the points referred to Poland. The aim of the paper is to focus on the exponents of deontic modality used in that text of historical value and to find the answer to the question concerning the deontic value of each point. The analysis will encompass the principles of deontic logic as well as the meaning of deontic modals in legal discourse at the time of speech delivery as those 14 points should be classified as a text belonging to legal genres. The aim of the paper is to present the historical background and the linguistic analysis in order to find out whether historical facts, interpretations and language used correspond with one another.

The Battle for a Dry America

Chapter 17 examines the Anti-Saloon League’s pivot to pressing for the Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment. In 1912 former president Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party Progressive against his handpicked Republican successor, William Howard Taft, as Taft had undermined Roosevelt’s signature Pure Food and Drug Act, which included purity standards on alcohol. The electoral split gave the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who was agnostic toward prohibition. World War I and the accompanying “cult of military sobriety” strengthened prohibitionist sentiment, while the election of 1916 secured the legislative supermajorities needed for a prohibition amendment. Once passed in December 1917, the amendment was ratified with unprecedented speed by January 1919, to come into effect one year later. In the meantime, drys pushed for a “wartime prohibition” until demobilization was complete. With prohibition in America secured, activists looked abroad through the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA) and its chief emissary, Pussyfoot Johnson.