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2504Chap2 7/4/03 12:38 pm Page 29 2 Contested national identities and weak state structures in Eurasia Douglas Blum Since their very inception, many of the Soviet successor states have been beset by ethnic violence, crime, trafficking – in arms, drugs and people – terrorism, poverty, pollution and migration.1 Most have also faced deeper problems of legitimacy and ideological drift. To a significant extent these pathologies can be traced back to the delegitimisation of the entire Soviet world view, and the lack of any viable replacement. The existence of an
Shakya , H. ( 2020 ), ‘ Why Context Matters for Social Norms Interventions: The Case of Child Marriage in Cameroon ’, Global Public Health , 15 : 4 , 532 – 43 . Clark , S. , Bruce , J. and Dude , A. ( 2006 ), ‘ Protecting Young Women from HIV/AIDS: The Case Against Child and Adolescent Marriage ’, International Family Planning Perspectives , 32 : 2 , 79 – 88 . Cockburn , C. ( 1998 ), The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict ( London : Zed Books ). Connell , R. W. and
those institutions have had in 19 2504Introduction 7/4/03 12:37 pm Page 20 Introduction fostering security cooperation and mitigating conflict in Eurasia. Part II examines a broad range of threats to Eurasian stability and the European security order. Douglas Blum, in Chapter 2, investigates the important role played by identity politics in the shaping of the Eurasian security environment. Blum focuses on the potentially combustible mix of contested national identities and weak state structures that have emerged in the successor states of the former Soviet Union
forge a common national identity among their populations. Where the drive to bring state and nation into correspondence is obstructed, irredentist conflicts tend to destabilise regimes and foster inter-state conflict. Nowhere is the divergence of identity and state sharper than in the Middle East. There popular identification with many individual states has been contested by strong sub- and supra-state identities, diluting and limiting the mass loyalty to the state typical where it corresponds to a recognised nation (Ayoob 1995: 47–70; Hudson 1977: 33
conflicts which remain far from any kind of sustainable solution, and none are completely dislocated from the dynamics of US–China relations. Taiwan is the most “existential”. China’s One China policy is a non-negotiable feature of its national identity, and Washington’s commitment to defend the island should not be underestimated. The Obama presidency was an era of relative calm here, but during his campaign for the presidency Donald Trump openly challenged the One China policy by treating Taiwan as a bargaining chip and speaking to President Tsai Ing-wen, angering
off full-scale war is all the more notable. Macedonian nationalism is a new phenomenon. In the early twentieth century, there was no separate Slavic Macedonian identity; Macedonian villagers defined their identity as either ‘Bulgarian’, ‘Serbian’ or even ‘Greek’ depending on the affiliation of the village priest.29 The separate Macedonian nationalist mythology and national identity are essentially a post-World War II phenomenon, a product of Tito’s postwar nationality policy. According to the Macedonian mythology, modern Macedonians are the descendants of the
through multilateral balancing of Russian influence and by signalling their national identity preferences through the GUUAM group. Meanwhile, the growth of American military engagement in Eurasia has the potential to transform another multilateral institution – the SCO – into a mechanism for a renewed Sino-Russian alliance. Despite potential fissures arising from great power competition in the region, the states of Eurasia share some important interests in multilateral cooperation. Russia and China, as well as key medium-sized states such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
within which their democratic institutions are imprisoned and their national identity is diluted. The agenda could not be any more parochial. For the citizens to accept a recycling of their cherished nation-state within an ill-defined union of member-states, the European institutions will have to do more in such areas as jobs, income distribution, ageing populations and inadequately funded pension funds, immigration flows, education, national cohesion, political leadership and much else. Not ‘as if’ but ‘what if’ the EU could save the nation-states, once again, from
case studies, such as Ireland, Austria and Italy, and an emphasis on narratives of reconstruction, productivity and national identity. 14 The case of Greece and the humanitarian narratives of the MP films at large have been underexplored so far. By concentrating on the MP films about Greece, my aim is to correlate their discourse of reconstruction with the narrative of humanitarianism and to
state, which has varied from Ataturk’s authoritarian regime to today’s fragmented parliamentary system, explains little variation in its foreign policy. Turkey’s state formation experience set it on a status quo, West-centric tangent. Ataturk’s successful war of independence against the Western designs on Anatolia imposed by the Treaty of Sèvres spared Turkey colonial subjugation and enabled establishment of a territorial state within boundaries that satisfied Turkish national identity. The consequent eclipse of former alternative identities