War Order Research Articles

The Yellow Peril and the Ontology of the Enemy

How and when did war come to be understood as a “science”—one that could be quantitatively calculated and measured in such a way that one could derive universal laws? This paper turns to the archives of the Operations Research Office (ORO) during the Korean War to argue that race war orders and produces a scientific “truth” of war. This techno-scientific “truth” drives war to increasingly brutal forms of imperial and racial violence while simultaneously naturalizing and sanitizing this violence as the nature of war. Techno-scientific war produced a racialized enemy: the numerically superior Asian Communist attacked in human waves, willing to sacrifice soldiers because of an Asian disregard for life. But the enemy’s tactics, however seemingly irrational, could be rendered predictable through quantitative analysis. Race ordered techno-scientific war. Combat was rendered sensible through perfecting and managing the superior techno-scientific capabilities of the white race to overcome the problem of the Asian horde and ensure victory. By treating Korea as a “laboratory” for future combat, the ORO ordered and produced these racialized visions through technical manuals on infantry weapons, chemical weapons, and atomic weapons.

European Security, NATO–Russia Relations, and the Post–Cold War Order

European Security, NATO–Russia Relations, and the Post–Cold War Order

“Green peppers, tomatoes, and lemons, disunite!”: Feminist solidarity in times of wars

AbstractThis article focuses on female bodies co‐laboring across the racial lines and academic‐activist divides to explore both the potentials and constraints of feminist solidarity in the hyper‐masculine and ultra‐nationalist normative order of the global war on terror. Anthropological studies have deconstructed phantasmatic narratives of the global war on terror by disclosing its racialized and classed structure. However, what remains understudied is how racialized female bodies are subjected to the biopower and necropower of this war. This ethnography concentrates on the feminist solidarity between Özlem Yasak and Serra Hakyemez, the coauthors of this article, which stretches over 13 years and moves between the colony and the metropole and the Global South and Global North. It examines how a Turkish academic and a Kurdish activist (both lower middle‐class women) forge, cultivate, and repair their comradeship as they move from an immigration office to their family house to neoliberal universities. Based on what we call the Other‐graphy as a new feminist method, this article argues that the global war on terror expands its reach as the humanitarian and neoliberal regimes of power recruit activists and academics to the fantasy of autonomous subjectivity posited against their possible political solidarity.

Iraq: Iraq against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post–Cold War Order, by Samuel Helfont

Iraq against the World: Saddam, America, and the Post–Cold War Order, by Samuel Helfont. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. 280 pages. $39.95 cloth, e-book

Ideology, war, and genocide – the empirical case of Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT This article explores the connections among the discursive nature of ideology, identity politics, forced displacement, and symbolic and actual war violence leading to genocide. The general framework of the article is the Bosnian War (1992–1995), waged against the country and its civilians. The analytical basis is a literature review of various studies from the domains of sociology of knowledge, war sociology, and social epistemology. It is based on the perspective of the genocide in Bosnia as a process that began in northwest and east Bosnia in 1992 and terminated in Srebrenica in 1995 (in the municipality Prijedor in northwest Bosnia in 1992, more than 3000 civilians were killed). Mass crimes and the policy of fear mongering were intended to create and recreate the collective belief that coexistence in Bosnia was impossible and that establishing “ethnically pure cultures” and “ethnically pure territories” should be accepted as a deterministic historical necessity. The results of our research indicate that crimes against civilians can be “normalized” only after a “new social order” has been established as a war order with the help of media propaganda. Genocide can be committed only if the perpetrators (and its advocates acting in the name of specific identity politics) believe that committing violence can be justified by a “higher cause.”

The Intervention That Originated the Post-Cold War Order

The article retraces how the Soviet Union and the United States tried to establish a partnership in the wake of Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The international community strongly condemned the invasion, and the two superpowers chose to cooperate in finding a solution to the crisis. The Soviet leadership was persistent in searching for a peaceful settlement. But the Bush administration, seeking to lay the grounds for U.S. dominance in a “new world order,” opted for the use of force. Moscow opposed this, but cautiously, trying to persuade Iraq to concede, while avoiding an aggravation of relations with the U.S. This policy went nowhere, and the international crisis over the Iraqi invasion catalyzed the post-Cold-War U.S.-centric world order.

One year since Russia invaded Ukraine

On February 24th 2022, the conflict in Ukraine became a war with global impact. The Russian army’s rapid entry into eastern Ukraine also hastened the breakdown of what remained of the post-Cold War order in Europe. Security architecture paradigms have changed dramatically at both global and European levels. US–China strategic competition, global resource markets and even Ukraine's institutional construction have all been shaken by the war. As the conflict continues to escalate on the ground, this CIDOB Nota Internacional analyses its impact in the geopolitical, economic, technological and migration fields. With no path to resolution in sight, the threat of a long war or a frozen conflict is the worst-case scenario for both Ukraine and Europe.

The security of the Republic of Poland and the war in Ukraine in contemporary leftist thinking in Poland

The subject of the article is the security of the Republic of Poland and the war in Ukraine in contemporary Polish left-wing thought, represented primarily by the Democratic Left Alliance and the New Left. The security of citizens is the basic determinant of raison d’état and at the same time a key challenge for authorities. The study covered the 21st century because it brought a change in 1) the international system – the Russian Federation questioned the post-Cold War order, 2) lowering the level of security in Central and Eastern Europe, and 3) bringing new challenges for Poland after Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. The cognitive purpose of the article is the assessment of the international environment and threats to Poland made by the Left, as well as the postulated model of security, political and military security, and – in the context of the war in Ukraine – the attitude to the actions of the Polish authorities after 24 February 2022. It should be emphasized that the social democratic movement is a political environment that hopes to take political power in Poland after the expected electoral success in the autumn of 2023. The position of the Left on key matters for state security is interesting not only for researchers but also has a utilitarian meaning.

Changes in the Cold War Order in the Mid to Late 1980s and Whereabouts of Korean Liberal Democracy

Changes in the Cold War Order in the Mid to Late 1980s and Whereabouts of Korean Liberal Democracy

차이나메디컬보드(CMB)의 경북의대 의학교육 지원과 그 의의, 1953-1974

This study investigates the case of the U.S. China Medical Board (CMB) educational assistance to Kyungpook National University (KNU), School of Medicine from 1953 to 1974 and analyzes its implications. Higher education and medical education have been centered in Seoul since the time of liberation, and the majority of educational support has remained within this framework. From 1953 to 1974, the CMB of the Rockefeller Foundation provided educational assistance to the KNU School of Medicine in Daegu, which was unusual under the circumstances. This study will concentrate on KNU and examine the development of educational assistance. The first period of CMB support for KNU lasted from 1953 to 1965, while the second lasted from 1966 to 1974. The budget for the first half was allocated to the reconstruction of medical education after the Korean War. In contrast, the budget of the second half was allocated to research grants to assist KNU in becoming a research-focused medical school. The case of the suspension and resumption of CMB’s aid to KNU in 1960-1961 due to a school strike will be used to illustrate the relationship between CMB's educational assistance and the U.S.-led Cold War order.

Unraveling the frontier: A new look at the Inter-Korean border

Constantly shifting geopolitical-economic conditions of the Korean peninsula pose analytical challenges that existing approaches to the inter-Korean border have failed to address; they require a fresh epistemological perspective. The concept of a frontier, which has been widely employed in association with Western history, is helpful in elucidating these complexities. This paper claims that conflicting imperial interests and imperatives construct the inter-Korean border as a frontier. Once a geopolitical front line to recover lost territory and extend freedom, the inter-Korean border was relegated to the periphery as the Cold War order persisted. It was only after the early 2000s that a new geoeconomic vision of frontier was promoted in South Korean academia and policy circles. However, it is not a clear-cut transition but a more complicated competition between geopolitical and geoeconomic visions that has constructed the border in the form of a frontier. Examining the recent conflicts in border cities regarding the distribution of anti-North Korean leaflets across the border, this paper demonstrates that these imperial visions projected in the form of frontiers lay bare hope, profit, or desire but mask the suffering of local border people.

역사학자 박시형의 민족과 과학

Park Si-hyeong, who studied historiography at Keijō Imperial University, participated in the Chintan Society to develop scientific modern positivist historiography and at the same time published a number of enlightening articles about the culture and traditions of Korea in popular magazines. Si-hyeong’s historical studies during the colonial period can be evaluated as pursuing the science and the nation. Immediately after liberation, Park Si-hyeong was active as a Marxist historian in the atmosphere of left-right collaboration.BR After going to North Korea in August 1946, he led the establishment of North Korean historiography by serving as a teacher at Kim Il-sung University and as director of the Institute of History at the Academy of Sciences. History of Joseon Land Institutions, published in 1960 and 1961, was the result of scientific Marxist historiography that compiled his research since his graduation thesis at Keijō Imperial University, based on the theory of feudal state ownership.BR Park Si-hyeong turned to ancient history research in the 1960s. “For the Study of Balhae History”, published in 1962, is a monumental thesis that placed Balhae in Korean history, and is evaluated as laying the groundwork for future research on Balhae history in the academia of North and South Korea. In addition, Si-hyeong’s interpretation of the tombstone of King Gwanggaeto succeeded to Jeong In-bo’s interpretation. It can be seen that the focus of historiography has shifted from science to nation. Since the 1980s, as the Cold War order has been shaken, East Asian historical exchanges have been in full swing. Si-hyeong visited Japan and China and took on the role of advocating nationalist history common to two Koreas. Even in the South Korean media in the 1980s and 1990s, Park Si-hyeong was introduced as a nationalist historian.

Mobility control as state-making in civil war: Forcing exit, selective return and strategic laissez-faire

This paper addresses the question of how different actors attempt to control mobility during civil war, and how mobility control and processes of state-making interact in such settings. Mobility in civil wars is often considered a political act by the various actors involved: Leaving the country can be perceived as an act of opposition, as can moving between territories which are controlled by different, opposing factions. Drawing on literature on strategic displacement and migration politics and combining this with empirical insights from the ongoing wars in Libya and Syria, the paper identifies three mechanisms of mobility control in civil war settings: forcing exit, selective return as a form of expulsion, and strategic laissez-faire as the intentional absence of regulation regarding displacement and return. The analysis reveals that all three mechanisms are employed by state actor(s), rebels, and militias, and can be understood as elements of a new (post)war order that includes some citizens while excluding others depending on perceptions of political threats. We interpret the three mechanisms as ways in which actors in civil war settings attempt to manipulate a country’s demography in their own favour in a process of state-making. The paper is based on fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2021 in Syria, Lebanon, Libya, and Tunisia.

Süreyya Ağaoğlu and the emerging liberal order in early Cold War Turkey

This article discusses the life, career, and associations of Süreyya Ağaoğlu, Turkey’s first female lawyer, in the years leading up to Turkey’s watershed 1950 election, in order to understand Turkey’s liberal opposition. Considering her writings and experiences reveals not only the contested nature of liberalism in this period but also ways in which postwar liberalism was intertwined with the networks undergirding the emerging American-led Cold War order. Not only did she interact in her professional life with champions of liberalism from around the world, but she was also connected through her family to important figures in Turkey’s own liberal tradition. Her experience as a both a product of the ‘Kemalist’ state-building project and a critic of its excesses helps us think about the nature of political opposition during Turkey’s late 1940s democratization.

Beyond State and Hegemony: International Orders as Anarchic Meta-Fields

AbstractThis paper extends a Bourdieusian practice-based approach to a novel understanding of international orders as “Anarchic Meta-Fields” (AMFs). It first explores the metatheoretical advantages inherent in Field Theory's expansion toward questions of order, considering the position of Bourdieu at the intersection of Weberian, Durkheimian, and Marxist social theory. It then increases the analytical breadth of preceding “imperial” and “hegemonic” applications of Bourdieu's framework through two disaggregations—of order and realist notions of hegemony, and realist and neo-Gramscian forms of the same. In a first, Hobbesian turn, the international social space is subsequently conceptualized as an “AMF” created by outward rather than inward projections of power and practice by state nobilities; variations within this global AMF are identified as “subfields”. The openness of Bourdieu's framework is then argued to allow for the widest range of international orders based on specific configurations of multidimensionally defined capital, and varying forms of doxic practice. The framework is illustrated through an application to the Cold War order as a composite social space, consisting of the global AMF itself, and four distinct, yet heteronomous subfields. The paper concludes with a proposed conceptual and empirical research agenda.

Translocality and the future: postcolonial connectivities in 1960s Ghana

ABSTRACT This article explores the translocality of 1960s Ghana. It brings into conversation the connectivities crafted by official state diplomacies conducted by Kwame Nkrumah’s government in the name of Pan-Africanism and the activisms, organizational work, and movements of Pan-African, diaspora, and white European women within and beyond Ghana, against the backdrop of a racialized global Cold War order. Focusing on the messiness and tensions of these connections I bring into conversation seemingly separate agential topics. Whether it is through state visits with Eric Williams, the tensions of minister exchange programmes with Guinea, or of diaspora conferences and organizing by African and Afro-American women, and the racialized and gendered dynamics of Nkrumaism, each is entangled and co-constituted with the wider ideational and material reality of the relational living postcolonial project. The variety of experiences, dramas, disputes, and possibilities, speak to how Ghana’s connections with the world were interpreted and used to advance visions of civil rights and Pan-Africanism, while also operating within, against, and beyond the state. The relational project of Nkrumaism demonstrates how translocal power can be crafted to change the nature of translocal entanglements, not erase them, but make them more equitable, while simultaneously reproducing underlying tensions.

Transformation of the post-cold war order and the global and regional powers policy in the South Caucasus after the 2020 Karabakh war

The end of the Cold War ushered in a Unipolar world characterized by the US hegemony. In 1990s and early 2000s the US was realizing the strategy of “liberal hegemony” with emphasis on democracy promotion in the former socialist camp. The NATO enlargement and the support to the EU extension were key pillars of this strategy. There was a perception among pundits and policymakers that the “liberal democracy” will spread all over the world, bringing a new era of peace and stability. However, the Unipolar moment was short lived. The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 marked the beginning of the transformation of the post-Сold War order. The reasons behind this transformation are numerous - the relative decline of the US, the rise of others, most notably China, and the launch of the new multilateral organizations such as BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The transformation of the post-cold war order brings back the notion of multipolar world and the “great power competition”. The emergence of the "multi-polar world order" will inevitably trigger regional instability and the rivalry for regional hegemony. The absence of the world hegemon or the "world policeman" means that the second-tier states will be more inclined to use coercion as the primary tool to push forward their national interests. The world is facing the unraveling of the global world order with very few clues on what the new emerging order may look like. One pattern is obvious - states are putting more emphasis on the coercion, force and hybrid warfare as a key element of their foreign policy. Meanwhile, the absence of global hegemon triggers the tough and often violent struggle for dominance among regional powers. The South Caucasus was an arena of overlapping interests of many actors - Russia, the US, the EU, Turkey, and Iran. While in 1990s and 2000s the geopolitical configuration of the region was based on the competition between Turkey - Azerbaijan - Georgia partnership supported by the US, and Russia - Armenia alliance, the situation has changed in recent years. Turkey’s quest for independent foreign policy and growing tensions between Turkey and the US have resulted in a establishment of competitive/cooperative relations between Russia and Turkey. Ankara and Moscow are still competitors but they are able to manage their contradictions. The 2020 Karabakh war was a harbinger of upcoming changes in the regional balance of power. Azerbaijan won the war receiving significant military support from Turkey, Armenia suffered significant losses, while Russia deployed its peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh. As South Caucasus faces the growing competition between external actors vying for influence, and as Russia - West relations were completely ruined after the February 2022, the region has become another arena for Russia - West competition. The US and the EU are interested to push Russian peacekeepers out from Nagorno Karabakh after the end of the initial five-year term, viewing this as a significant step in reducing Russian influence in the region. Meanwhile, Russia seeks to stabilize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, meanwhile keeping its military presence in Nagorno Karabakh. Despite the growing tensions between Turkey and the US, Ankara still remains main tool for the US in its efforts to decrease Russian power in South Caucasus.

핵의 관점에서 본 러시아-우크라이나 전쟁

When we approach Russia-Ukraine War with the perspective of nuclear competition, relentless competition, driven by typical security dilemma, to achieve nuclear superiority is found to be strongly implicated before, during, and after the war. After the post-Cold War order emerged, the U.S. attempted to gain nuclear superiority over Russia by establishing theater missile defense system across Europe. Threat perception coming from the fear of its nuclear deterrence being undermined by America’s damage limitation strategy forced Russia to modernize its nuclear forces and extend the scope of nuclear deterrence to include the possible use of nuclear weapons even against conventional attacks. While Putin raising the prospect of using nuclear weapons invaded Ukraine, the U.S. response seemed to be constrained by the fear of nuclear escalation. Russia-Ukraine War has found 1994 Budapest Memorandum to be nothing more than empty statements and has awakened the world to the reality that nuclear threats are actively being used as a tool of intimation and escalation management. As such, Russia-Ukraine War has ushered us into “New Nuclear World” characterized by (1) the nuclear paradigm shift from non-proliferation to nuclear competition, (2) retreat of nuclear arms control regime, (3) and tripolar (U.S., Russia, and China) nuclear dynamics.

1950년대 중립주의의 발흥과 남·북한의 반응

Examined in this article is how both South and North Koreas perceived and responded to the concept of Neutralism, which emerged all around the globe after the Korean War. Analyzed in particular is rather ‘symmetrical responses’ displayed by both South and North Korean governments, to global events that occurred in the wake of such ideology emerging in the 1950s, such as the Bandung Conference in 1955, Austria’s Neutralization and Unification during the same year, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and the drafting of the first version of the Yugoslav Communist Alliance Code in 1958.BR Research shows that both South and North Korean governments responded rather symmetrically toward the Asian and African regions where Neutralism prevailed(as we can see from the Bandung Conference), the Free World(as in the case of Austria), and the Communist realm(as in cases of Hungary and Yugoslavia), during the Cold War of the 1950s. Their such responses varied, depending on whether they could benefit from the effects of supporting neutrality.BR Previous studies of the Cold War History, either from Korean scholars or from scholars abroad, have concentrated on the relations between ‘Central regions,’ or relations between regions which were rather ‘Central’ while the other was mostly categorized ‘Peripheral.’ Attempted in this work conversely is to define and determine the relationship between regions that could both be considered as ‘Peripheries.’ It should be noted that South and North Koreas have together formed one of the last front-lines of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula which has always been perceived as a ‘Peripheral region,’ and that other countries which declared Neutralism in the hope of escaping clutches of the polarizing nature of the Cold War order were also such peripheries.

1950~60년대 판문점 개방과 남북한의 체제 선전

Examined in this article is how Panmunjom(the Joint Security Area) emerged as a global sightseeing spot, and a battle ground for state propaganda between South and North Koreas. Such emergence was during the 1950s and ’60s, after the Korean war, and occurred in the wake of both Koreas’ competition with each other, in the Cold War political climate. Naturally there were also several ‘unofficial’ cases of contacts between South and North Korean visitors happening here and there, enabled by the Panmunjo m’s opening to the public. That is examined here as well, so that we could ascertain the historic meaning of such encounters.BR Panmunjom was where, during the Korean War, negotiations for the armistice took place. And after that, it was also used as an office space for the Military Armistice Commission, and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission. It was the only place where both Koreas could officially meet with each other, so ever since the armistice in 1953, reporters and civilian visitors continued to visit the place. In the 1960s Panmunjom was even opened as a tourist attraction, through a decision that was actively pushed by not only the South Korean government and its policy of tourism promotion, but also the UN Command’s view of Panmunjom as an effective tool for propaganda. Later, other facilities like the “House of Freedom” and Panmun-gak were constructed as well, further sealing Panmunjom’s role and status as a propaganda space. BR With the Panmunjom opened, all sorts of unofficial encounters between visitors from both Koreas continued. They were of course all under control and close monitoring of the state authorities, but they were also incidents that could ultimately cause some cracks in the once rigid Cold War order.