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those who adhere to law and order, and another law for those who defy. In other words she has made a mockery of the immigration laws of this country’. 7 Rosemary Taylor (1938–2019), Elaine Moir (1937–2012) and their companion Margaret Moses (1940–75) became synonymous with the humanitarian operations involved in aiding war orphans during the Vietnam War. Much of the literature on Taylor, Moir and Moses
During the 1980s the spectre of the Vietnam War haunted the sites of cinema and popular culture in various forms. Whereas a rich body of scholarly research exists on cinematic iterations of the Vietnam war as trauma, the discursive dynamics between memory, ideology and genre in relation to enemy image construction are somewhat underdeveloped. This article utilises genre studies, conflict studies and trauma theory in analysing how the representations of film villains interact with the construction of cultural trauma and national identity. Considering the American action thriller to be an important site for processes of commemoration and memorialisation, the discursive construction and formal articulation of national trauma are theorised within the genre. Additionally, a thematic and textual analysis was conducted of a sample of forty American action thriller films. The analysis illustrates how the genre operates through a structure of violent traumatisation and heroic vindication, offering a logic built on the necessity and legitimacy of revenge against a series of enemy-others.
On first glance, M*A*S*H (1972–83) might not be the ideal text for Gothic analysis. Aesthetically, the traditional dark castles surrounded by black forests in the moonlight are replaced by muted khaki and green canvas Army tents, and the tinny canned laughter punctuating the sardonic jokes echo longer than the terrified screams in the night. Gothic and war are uneasy bedfellows; it is the inclusion of comedy, however, that determines just how horrific the result can be. Using M*A*S*H as a primary example to explore what I refer to as Khaki Gothic this paper will explore how, utilising Gothic tropes, comedy can disguise, diffuse and intensify the horrors of war.
The unimagined community proposes a reexamination of the Vietnam War from a perspective that has been largely excluded from historical accounts of the conflict, that of the South Vietnamese. Challenging the conventional view that the war was a struggle between the Vietnamese people and US imperialism, the study presents a wide-ranging investigation of South Vietnamese culture, from political philosophy and psychological warfare to popular culture and film. Beginning with a genealogy of the concept of a Vietnamese “culture,” as the latter emerged during the colonial period, the book concludes with a reflection on the rise of popular culture during the American intervention. Reexamining the war from the South Vietnamese perspective, The unimagined community pursues the provocative thesis that the conflict, in this early stage, was not an anti-communist crusade, but a struggle between two competing versions of anticolonial communism.
This is the second book in a two-volume study tracing the evolution of the Labour Party's foreign policy throughout the twentieth century to the present date. It is a comprehensive study of the history of the Labour Party's worldview and foreign policy. The study argues that Labour's foreign policy perspective should be seen not as the development of a socialist foreign policy, but as an application of the ideas of liberal internationalism. Volume Two provides a critical analysis of Labour's foreign policy since 1951. It examines Labour's attempts to rethink foreign policy, focusing on intra-party debates, the problems that Labour faced when in power, and the conflicting pressures from party demands and external pressures. The book examines attitudes to rearmament in the 1950s, the party's response to the Suez crisis and the Vietnam War, the bitter divisions over nuclear disarmament and the radicalisation of foreign and defence policy in the 1980s. It also examines Labour's desire to provide moral leadership to the rest of the world. The last two chapters focus on the Blair and Brown years, with Blair's response to the Kosovo crisis and to 9/11, and his role in the ‘war on terror’. Whereas Blair's approach to foreign affairs was to place emphasis on the efficacy of the use of military force, Brown's instead placed faith in the use of economic measures.
This is a comprehensive study of US policy towards China during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a critical phase of the Cold War immediately preceding the dramatic Sino-American rapprochement of the early 1970s. Based on a wide array of recently declassified government documents, it challenges the popular view that Johnson's approach to China was marked by stagnation and sterility, exploring the administration's relationship to both the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution. By documenting Johnson's contributions to the decision-making process, the book offers a new perspective on both his capacity as a foreign-policy leader and his role in the further development of the Cold War.
’ personnel bearing that same emblem, based on the Swiss flag, in homage to the country hosting the conference. The Geneva Conventions have evolved, filling out with each successive conference, and their scope has been broadened to include the shipwrecked (1906), prisoners (1929) and civilian populations (1949). ‘Additional protocols’ were adopted in 1977, in the wake of the wars of decolonisation and the Vietnam War, to cover ‘irregular’ forces in domestic conflicts. The original
aspirations of the casualties of the attempt to create one world in the image of liberal freedom. Resistance was often futile or at least hugely costly (think of Vietnam). Wars were waged for decades to ensure no part of the system could harbour an economic model or an ideological commitment that was antithetical to the liberal capitalist consensus or refuse to open up its resources to the needs of the international market ( Robinson, 1996 ). Take, for example, Henri Dunant, the patron saint of modern humanitarianism, who was actually at Solferino
for the first time in a century, plague should be identified as a re-emerging disease ( Vallès, 2020 : 14). If plague spread into a location defined by poor sanitation and mass flows of people, such as a refugee camp, its impact would be devastating. Fortunately, plague has not yet widely affected modern refugees, with the only well-reported and significant outbreaks occurring among South Vietnamese refugees during the Vietnam War ( Whitehall, 2009 : 671). Given, however, that both
, these references also lead us into the global 1960s. It is only partly true that Biafra was the first postcolonial conflict that was discussed as a genocide – but the way these references worked changed with Biafra. Already before the American war in South East Asia, what is usually called the Vietnam War was then described as possibly genocidal. This was something that many New Leftists at least were concerned about. Some of their leading figures and intellectuals associated