Issues Of War Research Articles

After the Culture War?: Shifts and Continuities in American Conservatism

Following the 2008 American election, some analysts concluded that the election had signalled an end to the polarization and culture wars that had typified American politics. To some, demographic changes would cause this demise. To others, the moderating of religious groups was crucial. As social conservatives came to grips with the 2008 electoral defeats, some argued for emphasis on culture-war issues to revive their role. Sin No More (John Dombrink and Daniel Hillyard, 2007) had argued that, despite conservative rhetoric, the tide was turning on the core legal and moral issues of the American culture war, moving them toward normalization. It challenged the representation of America as a "centre-right" country. This article analyzes enduring and shifting elements of the American culture war: the broadening of the role of religion, the reduced salience of wedge issues, and the paradox that some forms of polarization are increasing as others are receding. Après les élections américaines de 2008, certains analystes ont conclu que l'élection signifiait la fin de la polarisation et des guerres de culture typiques de la politique américaine. Selon certains, les changements démographiques causeraient cette fin. Selon d'autres, la surveillance de groupes religieux était cruciale. Alors que les conservateurs sociaux commençaient à comprendre la défaite électorale de 2008, certains voulaient mettre l'accent sur les questions de guerre de culture afin de faire revivre leur rôle. Sin No More (2007) a soutenu que, malgré la rhétorique conservatrice, il y avait des changements en ce qui concernait les questions fondamentales, tant légales que morales, de la guerre de culture américaine, et que ces questions se normalisaient. Le livre défiait la représentation des États-Unis en tant que pays du centre droit. Cet article analyse les éléments qui perdurent et les éléments qui changent de la guerre de culture américaine : l'élargissement du rôle de la religion, la perte d'importance de points de clivage et le paradoxe du fait que certaines formes de polarisation augmentent alors que d'autres diminuent.

After the Culture War? Shifts and Continuities in American Conservatism

Abstract: Following the 2008 American election, some analysts concluded that the election had signalled an end to the polarization and culture wars that had typified American politics. To some, demographic changes would cause this demise. To others, the moderating of religious groups was crucial. As social conservatives came to grips with the 2008 electoral defeats, some argued for emphasis on culture-war issues to revive their role. Sin No More (John Dombrink and Daniel Hillyard, 2007) had argued that, despite conservative rhetoric, the tide was turning on the core legal and moral issues of the American culture war, moving them toward normalization. It challenged the representation of America as a “centre-right” country. This article analyzes enduring and shifting elements of the American culture war: the broadening of the role of religion, the reduced salience of wedge issues, and the paradox that some forms of polarization are increasing as others are receding.

Parallel Social Reality Construction of War Among Muslim and Christian Survivors in the Philippines

Conflicting notions of “the war” as experienced (subjective realities) surfaced in the study but generated “convergence” as these were correlated with the institutionalized beliefs of war (objective realities). Subjective realities include the victims’ psycho-social trauma and portrayal of “the other” culture as co-survivors of war. Divergent perceptions were anchored on the war victims’ age, religion, inter-marriage; the area’s political set-up, and economic climate among others. The victims’ reactions towards the prevailing issues of war (objective realities) are parallel despite distinct experiences. Many have shown disagreement towards the concept that the mass media help crystallize relevant issues, like the war in Mindanao. Majority also negated the belief that “Christians and Muslims can never co-exist peacefully, and that the 1974 war was a form of “jihad” or a religious war among Muslims. Here, communication clarified vital issues of the Mindanao conflict. It performed an emancipatory role that provided rhetorical and psychological relief to war survivors as they deconstructed their realities in a war-torn community like Sulu, Philippines.

Amar después de la muerte (review)

Reviewed by: Amar después de la muerte Ryan Prendergast Calderón de la Barca, Pedro . Amar después de la muerte. Ed. Jorge Checa. Kassel: Reichenberger, 2010. 282 pp. Jorge Checa offers a critical edition of Calderón's Amar después de la muerte (henceforth ADM), published twice in 1677 with the title El Tuzaní del Alpujarra. The more common title was adopted in the 1691 edition by Vera Tassis. Checa's introductory study is excellent and provides readers with the basics expected in any scholarly edition. However, the attention to detail and the depth of the commentary found in the hundred-page analysis offer the scholar a significant and suggestive corpus of information to consider while reading this comedia. The broad historical backdrop of the play is Morisco-Old Christian tensions and the subsequent pacification and persecution of—as well as the uprisings staged by—some Morisco populations. As we know, this conflict would ultimately lead, at least in part, to their mandated expulsion from Spain by Felipe III in the early seventeenth century. Checa divides his study into a number of thoughtful and useful sections that deal with ADM as a dramatic text, followed by discussions regarding, among others, questions of history, ideology, and literature. He also offers more explicit consideration of the Morisco rebellion of 1568 and its aftermath, along with an insightful comparison of the historical basis for some of the main characters and the dramatic invention employed by Calderón. Checa states that "no es menos significativo lo que el dramaturgo decide excluir o transformar" (3). The synopsis of ADM is divided into traditional jornada descriptions, but, in a most useful move, Checa also opts to summarize the action of the cuadros within each act, permitting a more specific review of the play's development and a better grasp of the characters' interactions. The analysis of the tragic aspects of both the characters and the play is insightful. I found Checa's assertion that AMD, unlike a number of other Golden Age plays that deal with war, "promueve una exploración bastante lúcida de la guerra moderna como fenómeno asociado al poder del Estado" to be a productive lens through which to consider the work (19). He explores the issue of war at length in subsequent sections of the study, fleshing out in more precise terms this broader statement. The section that traces the development of Alvaro Tuzaní, his function in the play as the moro sentimental (as also seen [End Page 184] in the character of Abindarráez in El Abencerraje), and the comparison with how he is represented both by Pérez de Hita in Guerras civiles de Granada and by Calderón exemplifies how Checa provides an essential broader context for a nonspecialist while also offering the specialist some excellent detailed discussion. The version of the comedia itself is highly readable, and, while like any critical edition it has its fair share of footnotes to explain particular vocabulary or to offer useful historical context, it does not suffer from the footnote overkill that could end up distracting a reader. Overall, the text is free of typographical errors, save for a handful of minor slips in the introductory study. Though not a great deal of scholarship appears to have been published on AMD, Checa's sustained analysis urges researchers to return to this comedia with renewed interest in what Calderón's representations of Moriscos, Christians, and their bellicose and pacific interactions can suggest about the broader questions of religious identity and cultural difference in the context of early modern Spain. Because of its various insights, solid contextual foundation, and literary analysis, as well as the play's contemporary resonances regarding race and discrimination, Jorge Checa's edition of Amar después de la muerte will be a useful addition to any Golden Age scholar's library. [End Page 185] Ryan Prendergast University of Rochester Copyright © 2012 Bulletin of the Comediantes

U.S.'s Foreign Policy and Nation-State Building in Iraq

In recent years, the issue of war and USA's unilateral actions in Middle East strategic zone made numerous debates among researchers of international relations, politicians, and diplomats. This formed political literature emphasized on two issues: the first one is about the way war actions taking place and its legitimacy in countries, and the second and more important one is about efficiency of USA in establishing stability, security and facing its unknown consequences in considered countries. In this respect, Nation-State building can be viewed based on the second issue. This article deals with transformations and events based on Nation-State building after Saddam fell from power. The aim is to see to what extent USA got ahead the Nation-State building project and what issues threaten this project.

Al-Khandaq al-Ghamiq. Memórias de um bairro em ruína no centro de Beirute

What is living in a city where the damages of the civil war (1975-1990) are still visible for its inhabitants? The description of the use of memory in a wounded district of Beirut aims to analyze the construction of urban temporalities in connection with the period of the Lebanese wars (1975-1990). The city space is approached here as the frame of everyday life and common and ordinary practices. It constitutes both a support and a vector of the expressions of memory. By creating monuments or by forgetting ruined buildings, society qualifies the war traces which very often symbolize what was one of the main issues in the civil war: the coexistence of communities in the urban space. However, if these traces supposedly refer to the war, their suggestive strength does not limit itself to it. The analysis of what takes place around buildings in ruins of the district of Khandaq al-Ghamiq, a former multicommunity district of Beirut, aims to understand the construction of the contemporary urban collective identifications. The practices of memory transmission, inheritance and the representations of these buildings reveal the complexity of the relations between good souvenirs and forgetting that can appear as the negative of the work of memory. Therefore, what could appear at first sight as a gap related to the particular conditions of the field investigation reveals, in the analysis, the tensions that govern the way and the power to talk (or not to talk) about the war.Key words: Al-Khandaq al-Ghamiq, ruins, collective memory.

UN Authority and the Morality of Force

The role of the UN as the sole source of legitimacy for issues of war and peace in the early twenty-first century is highly problematic from a Just War perspective.

The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War

The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War

Agenda Control in the 2008 CNN/YouTube Debates

This article examines the evolving dynamic between citizens, journalists, and politicians—what we call agenda control—using the CNN/YouTube presidential primary debates as a case. A systematic content analysis of questions asked and candidates’ answers as compared with standard journalist-as-questioner debates hosted by MSNBC reveals that the dynamic between politicians, journalists, and citizens suggests that journalists do a better job of getting candidates to answer questions than do citizens in the YouTube video format, not by virtue of being journalists, but by virtue of asking the right form of question. Results also indicate that the CNN/YouTube debate questions from citizens failed to reflect the broad set of issues of interest to those who submitted questions, and instead included a disproportionate number of culture–war issues and campaign strategy questions. Findings suggest that journalists maintain the upper hand in agenda control.

Picture Books for Engaging Peace and Social Justice With Children

This article, written as a textual professional development session, discusses a selection of picture books (fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) for purposeful engagement across curriculum disciplines to sustain a living conversation with children on themes of peace and social justice. These texts carry the potential to cultivate intercultural and interfaith dialogue; to promote the development of historical consciousness; to take up questions of how we might proceed together as a species into a shared future; and to create compassionate understandings of self, another, and the human condition. Possible ways of reading the books with children are imagined. The books are grouped into themes including the rights of the child and human rights, refugees, faith, colonialism, peace, generosity, war, cultural diversity, and ecological issues and caring for the earth. Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way. … And I believe that love, compassion, and altruism are the fundamental basis for peace. Once these qualities are developed within an individual, he or she is then able to create an atmosphere of peace and harmony. (H. H. The Dalai Lama, as cited in Hahn, 1991, p. vii) The classroom door is open. Come in. We're welcome here. The environment is peaceful. Some children are browsing beautiful picture books that are displayed aesthetically and invitingly around the room. Some are reading with friends, and others deeply engaged in private reading. We notice diverse themes in the texts: war and peace, compassionate action, refugee experiences, religious diversity, children's rights, ecological justice, and more. We notice the many genres: Some are beautifully illustrated and narrated stories, some are poetry, some are nonfiction and filled with photographs and statistics, others are wordless. The books evoke a range of responses and emotions in us: questions, laughter, sorrow. The teacher and a small group of children are sitting together engaged in animated conversation over one of the books. Perhaps now, the teacher calls all of the children together. They gather and share their readings, their thoughts, their questions, their interpretations. They respond to one another. We note that there is no sense of rushing and plenty of time for mindful listening. Or, perhaps we walked into the classroom to discover the children buzzing in busy activity, painting their responses to the books, writing poetry, or engaged in creating drama and dance together. Perhaps they are writing letters to politicians or designing a fundraising action for a project that supports the lives of other children near or far. Perhaps we have joined them not in a classroom at all, but in the community where they are participating in a project to actively live and breathe more peace and justice into the world, inspired to ethical action by books they read together.

Jihād and Crusade: Byzantine positions towards the notions of "holy war"

 The current study aims to re-approach the issue of holy war in Byzantium by exploring Byzantine attitudes towards the ideology of the Crusade in the period 1096-1024. The starting-point of the study is the comparison of Byzantine reactions towards the ideology of jihād, which date in the period before the Crusades, with the Byzantine reactions towards the Crusade during the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries. The main part of the paper focuses on the exploration of Byzantine attitudes towards the two main Latin ideas that made the Crusade a notion of holy war, the ideas of deus vult and remissio peccatorum. 

Civil War Humor (review)

Reviewed by: Civil War Humor Ed Piacentino (bio) Civil War Humor. By Cameron C. Nickels. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. Pp. xvii, 162. $28.00 cloth) The first scholarly monograph on the comedy of the Civil War, Civil War Humor not only examines some of the more significant humorous popular culture of the era but does so within appropriate sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts, making Cameron Nickels's study of interest both to humor scholars and cultural historians. Among the bounty of materials in Nickels's book are more than sixty illustrations and thirty-odd humorous texts produced between 1861 and 1865, all representative of the issues of the Civil War. A compact book with an introduction and four chapters—"Humor and the Civil War Presidents," "Humor on the Home Front," "Civil War, War Humor," and "The African American in Civil War Humor"—Nickels explores songs, illustrations (many graphic and most with a sociopolitical agenda), poems, valentines, pictorial envelopes, sheet-music covers, and fiction, the products of his sustained and meticulous archival research. Stating his purpose to investigate "humor published during the war and . . . its role in shaping and reflecting the cultural imagination about it," Nickels persuasively shows that "humor shaped much the same rhetoric and iconography of serious popular literature" (p. xii). Moreover, his presentation of the comic materials and concise and incisive analysis of them engage (and keeps engaging) readers while at the same time exposing them to a diverse range of humorous texts, many of them unfamiliar. In his substantive introduction, Nickels accurately outlines how advances in printing proved effective in marketing war propaganda to the general reading public more quickly. This, too, was the "hey-day of illustrated journalism" he writes, and Union periodicals such as Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Yankee Notions, Harper's Weekly, Frank Leslie's Budget of Fun, and Vanity Fair, and Confederate ones such as Southern Illustrated News, Southern Punch, and the short-lived Bugle Horn of Liberty produced much of visual humor in what was becoming veritably a "paper war" (p. 12). [End Page 99] In his first chapter, Nickels observes, "The most fundamental purpose of humor in any war is to define the enemy, to put him in his comic, satiric place and thus make him and the cause he stands for laughable" (p. 17). Much of the humor about the leaders Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis he features does just that. Depending on the venue, Union or Confederate, the emphasis was to caricature these presidents, Nickels describing them as "the living embodiment of everything wrong with the other side" (p. 24). Some of the cartoons debunking the presidents were scathing and unflattering, some of the Davis ones depicting him after escaping from Richmond as cross-dressing, disguised in his wife's clothing, and labeled "The Shero," "Jeff in Petticoats," and "The Belle of Richmond" (p. 36). The illustrated Confederate periodicals, on the other hand, predictably portrayed Lincoln with demeaning racial epithets such as "Aperaham," "Ape Lincoln," and the "Old Baboon" (p. 39). In chapter two, Nickels distinguishes between Union and Confederate humor, aptly noting that the latter focused on "privations and other adversities as a way of coping with them" (p. 53). An amusing example of Confederate scarcity is an 1863 bogus announcement from the Selma (Ala.) Sentinel asking the ladies of that city to preserve their urine so it could be converted into potassium nitrate, an ingredient needed for gunpowder. While men wrote most of the Civil War humor, Nickels uncovers two key sources of women's humor, including some issues of the Waterford (Va.) News, an "underground" newspaper edited by Quaker women and Union sympathizers who presented humorously protofeminist materials from a female perspective, calling attention to the shifting roles of women brought on by the war. The other, comic valentines, offered a rich fund of female-generated satire directed against "shirkers, martial posturing, and chicanery" (p. 11). Chapter three covers topics such as draft evasion, battle experiences, boredom of camp life, and soldiers' fear of imprisonment, wounding, or killing. Humor, Nickels argues, helped to soften these wartime realities. Satire, with a humorous veneer, was directed against [End Page 100] Union and Confederate generals and lesser officers...

The Value of the Military Commissions Act as Non-Judicial Precedent in the Context of Litigation Over National Security Policymaking

At this writing, President Barack Obama has authorized the resumption of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, for those detainees eligible for trial before the commissions. By the time this essay is published, the war on terror will be entering its tenth year. By any reasonable measure, the emergency has ended, and it seems an appropriate time to examine the way in which the three branches of the federal government have responded to the terrorist threat. Here, we focus on the extent to which Congress can and should play a role in directing the war and national security issues related to terrorism. We have little doubt that the constitutional text allocates national security power between the legislative and executive branches. The question is whether Congress can wield that power in a meaningful way. We contend not just that Congress can do so, but that courts should invest particular Congressional actions with some presumptive weight when addressing disputes over the breadth of the executive’s national security powers. This is, to be sure, a modest point, but we should not overlook any potential lessons that can be learned from the legal battles over the conduct of the war on terror.

More Than Conquerors: Just War Theory and the Need for a Black Christian Antiwar Movement

Broadly speaking, the event of President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize takes on greater significance once we consider how utterly deafening the silence of the Black Church leadership has been on global matters of war and peace for the past decade. Simply put, the Black Church tradition has paid too little attention to the Christian attitudes toward issues of war and peace. Since the start of the twenty-first century, there have been mixed signals regarding the relationship of African Americans and US foreign policy. I will briefly outline the general terms of what is meant by the "just war" tradition. Next, the article will examine the historic circumstances surrounding Revd Dr Martin Luther King Jr's vigorous, yet aborted attempts, to foment a Black Christian antiwar stance in response to the great American military quagmire of his lifetime, the Vietnam War. Towards that end, I want to emphasize how Dr King's "Beyond Vietnam" rhetoric illustrated a helpful framework wherein the Black Church provides a prophetic witness in its quest for peace, while holding a truer, more meaningful definition of patriotism. Finally, I want to offer a brief glimpse of where we currently stand regarding the war in Iraq and why the Black Church tradition stands poised as a viable source of inspiration and correction for remaking not only this nation but also the globe.

The perceived threat of hegemonism in Romania during the second détente

The 1964 Romanian ‘Declaration of independence from Moscow’ signalled a change in Romania's foreign policy, widely argued to have been anti-Soviet after that date. Based on new archive materials, this article shows however that Romania's foreign policy should not be understood as anti-Soviet, but rather in terms of anti-hegemonism. Romania opposed and feared both the Soviet and American hegemonic tendencies, and their foreign policy decisions were very much influenced by these views. To exemplify the Romanian anti-hegemonic perceptions and policies, the article presents Romania's definitions on détente and the related Romanian goals in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 1973–75. It concludes that in terms of state politics and security threats, during the 1960s and 1970s, Romania saw the Cold War opposition not as an East–West, socialist–capitalist one, but rather as superpowers/great powers versus all the other powers. Furthermore, for Romania, détente represented a threat because it created the context for the hegemons to agree once again upon the fate of ‘the others’, negatively affecting their interests. The article also reveals the limits of the objectivist approach in dealing with different Cold War issues, and proposes a perceptual approach. It also opens further discussion of how leaders' perceptions influenced Romania's foreign policy decision making during that time.

Interdoc and West European Psychological Warfare: The American Connection

Interdoc, or the International Documentation and Information Center, was established in The Hague in early 1963 in order to coordinate a transnational network of institutes active in the field of analysing trends in communist ideology and societies. The product of deliberations between intelligence agencies and the private sector in Western Europe during the late 1950s, Interdoc reflected a need to develop and project a European stance on Cold War issues separate from an all-dominant US influence. Yet the Americans were present from the beginning, and their involvement gradually increased over time. This article covers the details of this involvement and uses it to comment on how Interdoc represents an interesting case of inter-service cooperation in anti-communist activities in the West.

Crises as Signals of Strength: The Significance of Affect in Close Allies’ Relationships

Affect exists among close allies and influences their actions and reactions vis-à-vis each other. These countries’ perceptions of, and affective attachment to, the specialness of their relationships explains why, in certain circumstances, big clashes occur among them. In this sense, affect explains why crises among close allies are more signals of strength than weakness: the passionate nature of such crises—as opposed to more routine or recurrent disagreements—is triggered by the high value placed by close allies on their ties and not, as often stated in the literature, by the erosion of these ties. After developing this argument, I illustrate it with the analysis of two crises among close allies: the Suez crisis between Britain and the United States in late 1956, and the Iraq crisis between France and the United States in early 2003. I then contrast these episodes with a crisis between two allies with a much less affectively charged relationship—the United States and Turkey, also in early 2003 over the Iraq War issue.

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Orthodox Perspectives on Peace, War and Violence

Political Indecision and Military Muddle in an Age of Grand Strategy

Classic writings on political decision making with respect to war traditionally emphasize grand strategies. But such European generated theories are often inapplicable in less developed areas of the world, and in which nation building remains suspect and incomplete. This article emphasizes the difficulty in policy approaches that rest on older doctrines of total war and well defined victory or defeat. The new 21st century “model” often admits only of political indecisions and military constraints. All sectors of advanced societies such as the United States are thus involved in issues such as traditional customs, militant religions, and socioeconomic alignments that limit military actions. While issue of war and peace remain intact, and in many instances protracted over time, the need for revised practices on the ground have become a central need and concern of economically advanced nations. This makes for a search of effective and appropriate ways for the conduct of humane military actions coupled with democratic civilian ambitions. Where such ends are not feasible, then caution should prevail.

Civil War Issues in Pennsylvania: A Review Essay

The following is an assessment of historical interpretations of Pennsylvania’s Civil War in modern literature on the subject. Readers should not expect to see the results of archival discovery or of research in original sources in this article. Nor is this meant to be a bibliography. It is, rather, an appraisal of the problems of interpreting Pennsylvania’s role in the Civil War and of the solutions to the problems offered by modern historical writing on the subject. The military contribution of Pennsylvania to the Civil War is likewise beyond our reach here. The bibliography on the Battle of Gettysburg alone would swamp this little article. The focus will be decidedly on the home front—on politics, society, and the economy.