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This book addresses some of the neglected problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It talks about emancipation, human security, 'security politics', language and threat-construction. The book is divided into three sections: agents; strategies and contexts; and futures. The first section outlines a range of possible agents or actors potentially capable of redressing individual suffering and vulnerability in the region. It examines East Asian regional institutions and dynamics of regionalism as potential sources of 'progressive' security discourses and practices. There is focus on the progressive security potential of regional institutions and regionalism has become increasingly prominent in literature on security in the Asia-Pacific. Two common interpretations of the role of epistemic communities in the construction of security are contested: that they are either passive sources of governmental legitimacy, or autonomous agents with the capacity of constructing or creating state interests. The second section reviews strategies and contexts, outlining a range of different sites of insecurity in the region, the ways in which dominant security discourses and practices emerge, and the extent to which such discourses are contested in different contexts. Indonesian government's approach to minority groups and separatism, the issue of civil unrest and human rights abuses in Burma, and the Australian government's attitude towards refugees and asylum-seekers are discussed. The third section deals with security futures, specifically discussing the question of what alternative security discourses and practices might look like. Finally, the book outlines a feminist critical security discourse and examines its applicability to the Asia-Pacific region.
. Second, there is a dynamic ‘security politics’ at work, which uses images of otherness and threat to consolidate and manipulate identity either as a political tactic, or a political end, or both. With remarks that insinuated the potentially treasonous nature of Australian Muslims – embodied in their religion and mores – the Liberal Party ministers and MPs conjured a ‘fifth
the first place are not addressed. While earlier reiterations of CONTEST acknowledged that there are socio-economic and political issues which need to be tackled to reduce breaches of security (HM Government, 2009 , 2011 ), there has now again been a shift away from tackling so-called “root causes.” As a result, UK security politics alienate and marginalize large parts of civil society and even create
them easy prey, thus removing their agency from the radicalisation process. The radicalisation process is often referred to using language that invokes brainwashing, perhaps because it makes ‘us’ feel better to know that in ‘our’ communities, there is no rational or political reason to become a terrorist recruit, only social and psychological vulnerabilities. As a result, CVE programmes focus on the components of the personal lives of individuals and communities in ways that are normally outside the purview of traditional security politics. As an American FBI memo
science and criminology. As the contributions to this volume show, the corpse is not always the end of the story. On the contrary, as we shall see, a corpse still holds the power to stir up more death. The overall argument is that the brutal treatment of corpses transgresses the spheres of national security politics and the simple spread of terror. Corpses are instead seen as a social force that enchants politics and socialises religion. They make the past present 164 Regnar Kristensen and foresee possible futures. Drawing on popular Catholic practices I stumbled
This edited volume explores the political, economic and security legacies former US President Barack Obama leaves across Asia and the Pacific, following two terms in office between 2009 and 2017. The aim is to advance our understanding of Obama’s style, influence and impact by interrogating the nature and contours of US engagement throughout the region, and the footprint he leaves behind. Moreover, it is to inform upon the endurance of, and prospects for, the legacies Obama leaves in a region increasingly reimaged in Washington as the Indo-Pacific. Contributors to the volume examine these questions in early 2019, at around the halfway point of the 2017–2021 Presidency of Donald Trump, as his administration opens a new and potentially divergent chapter of American internationalism. The volume uniquely explores the contours and dimensions of US relations and interactions with key Indo-Pacific states including China, India, Japan, North Korea and Australia; multilateral institutions and organisations such the East Asia Summit and ASEAN; and salient issue areas such as regional security, politics and diplomacy, and the economy. It does so with contributions from high-profile scholars and policy practitioners, including Michael Mastanduno, Bruce Cumings, Maryanne Kelton, Robert Sutter and Sumit Ganguly. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the international relations of Asia and the Pacific, broadly defined; US foreign policy and global engagement; the record and legacies of former President Barack Obama; and the foreign policies of the administration of President Donald Trump.
Can Russia, the European Union and the three major EU member states adopt a unified policy line in the global arena? This book investigates the cohesiveness of ‘greater Europe’ through the detailed scrutiny of policy statements by the leadership elites in the UK, France, Germany, Russia and the EU in connection with three defining events in international security. The crisis in Kosovo of 1999; the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the Iraq crisis of 2003. This extensive empirical enquiry results in a critical constructivist response to neorealist understandings of European security. The book contrasts the EU's new way of ‘doing security’ with the established, competitive bilateral interplay in the European security sphere and provides a clue to the kind of security politics that will prevail in Europe. A joint Moscow Brussels approach would improve the chances of both increasing their relative strength vis-a-vis the USA, but serious cleavages threaten to undermine such a ‘greater European’ common view on security. The book considers the extent to which the major European players pursue similar objectives, and assesses the possible implications for and the chances of greater Europe emerging as a cohesive global actor.
In the twenty-first century, ‘vulnerability’ has become central to the governance of security, migration, integration, social care and mental health. But what does it mean to govern through vulnerability? We might optimistically think vulnerability signifies a new-found commitment to precarious lives on the part of policymakers. But why, then, do associated policy recommendations appear to transform welfare state provision – moving away from provision to those in need and towards the remoulding of subjects so that they do not become ‘costly’ or ‘risky’? This book responds to the rise of ‘vulnerability’ in the fields of public health, psychology, international security, political administration, post-colonial African and Middle Eastern politics, policing and migration. Across this policy landscape, we show that vulnerability has become central to the reinvention of social governance. Wherever policymakers wish to extend social control further into communities and their municipal structures, the language of vulnerability is used to appropriate the spaces previously administered by the welfare state. How is the language of vulnerability so powerful and transformative? At its core, ‘vulnerability’ implies a pre-emptive temporality – it is used to denote the potential for something negative to occur. The reorganisation of security and social policies around vulnerability works to centre a preventive, anticipatory temporality. The book is split into two parts: looking first at the transformation of the welfare state that brought risk and security logics into social policy. The second part explores how contemporary national security programmes appropriate the language and modalities of safeguarding and care.
This chapter traces psychiatric debates on the relationship between vulnerability, work and welfare in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After post-traumatic conditions became actionable conditions under social insurance legislation passed in the 1880s, the psychiatric community was divided. Many psychiatrists treating survivors of industrial accidents for trauma did not see their patients as vulnerable, but the state: they argued that their patients’ symptoms were not caused by a distressing event but by their desire for a pension pay-out. This, they claimed, made the state vulnerable to unjustified, and in part fraudulent, pension claims. This chapter tracks this diagnostic debate, analysing key psychiatric publications on welfare and trauma. It will be argued that the object of security in these discourses of vulnerability was both highly contested and contentious – the question of who was vulnerable and who required protection from injury split the psychiatric community into hostile camps. The chapter draws out how psychiatry increasingly became drawn into a project of state defence by recognising the provision of welfare itself as pathogenic, casting it as a driver of work-avoidant psychic conditions among the working classes. The analysis thereby tracks how discourses of vulnerability and security unfolded in the context of the early welfare state in Germany and considers how these were mobilised in social and security politics.
The Arab–Israeli conflict has been at the centre of international affairs for decades. Despite repeated political efforts, the confrontation and casualties continue, especially in fighting between Israelis and Palestinians. This new assessment emphasizes the role that military force plays in blocking a diplomatic resolution. Many Arabs and Israelis believe that the only way to survive or to be secure is through the development, threat, and use of military force and violence. This idea is deeply flawed and results in missed diplomatic opportunities and growing insecurity. Coercion cannot force rivals to sign a peace agreement to end a long-running conflict. Sometimes negotiations and mutual concessions are the key to improving the fate of a country or national movement. Using short historical case studies from the 1950s through to today, the book explores and pushes back against the dominant belief that military force leads to triumph while negotiations and concessions lead to defeat and further unwelcome challenges. In The sword is not enough, we learn both what makes this idea so compelling to Arab and Israeli leaders and how it eventually may get dislodged.