Suchergebnisse

'Small wars' have returned to the international political agenda in the early twentieth century with almost a vengeance. Leaving aside the factors of social media and satellite television today, the nature of small wars has adhered to its politicized, xenophobic, and asymmetrical characteristics. The latter were predicted by British and American military manuals produced in the early to middle twentieth century. This special issue aims to revisit the nature of small wars in the era of great power interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the 2000s. It will be apparent that two further characteristics need to be appended to small wars: chameleonic missions and virtual aggression. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

"Small wars" have returned to the international political agenda in the early twentieth century with almost a vengeance. Leaving aside the factors of social media and satellite television today, the nature of small wars has adhered to its politicized, xenophobic, and asymmetrical characteristics. The latter were predicted by British and American military manuals produced in the early to middle twentieth century. This special issue aims to revisit the nature of small wars in the era of great power interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya in the 2000s. It will be apparent that two further characteristics need to be appended to small wars: chameleonic missions and virtual aggression.

Developmental railpolitics advances Chinese geostrategic ambitions without the overt opprobrium commonly generated by such issues as China's militarization of the South China Sea, military modernization, border conflicts and trade disputes. This article examines the implications of planned Chinese high-speed rail (HSR) investments in Thailand and Indonesia. The HSR project in Thailand represents an important advance in China's geopolitical influence through the larger design of the Singapore–Kunming Rail Link (SKRL), while the one in Indonesia is aimed at forging better economic ties with the largest country in Southeast Asia. It also assesses the room for political manoeuvre by those two countries vis-à-vis China's developmental railpolitics. Thailand considers the Chinese HSR project as only its first step to achieve its ambitious goal of becoming a land transportation hub in Indochina. Moreover, the Kingdom is still practising a strategy of balancing foreign powers. The HSR project in Indonesia also reflects changing political considerations on contracting foreign partners to build infrastructure. The conclusions suggest that China can be outmanoeuvred in railway bargaining by the recipient states, depending on geopolitical positioning and the nature of their domestic political and economic conditions. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)

This article attempts to engage in a preliminary twinned study of the foreign policy styles of Mahathir bin Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew within the framework of 'modernizing Southeast Asian foreign policies'. Modernization is a process of immense multidimensional displacement in economy, society, political system, attitudes towards politicians, identities, work, and consumption. As such the onus falls upon their leaders to either mitigate change or productively awaken their followers to embrace a new mode of thought. Both Lee and Mahathir have however chosen to engage in the foreign policy of intellectual iconoclasm featuring the narrative of 'productive shock', manufactured nationalist logics, elitist policy-making and elaborate self-propaganda. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

The Singaporean polity has created the 'militarized civilian'. This policy phenomenon beckons the question: How is this cross-fertilization carried out in Singapore's civil-military relations? Militarization is in the first sense meant to inculcate a calibrated dual personality within the civilian whereby being an effective soldier requires indulging in simulated military suffering as a badge of pride; at the same time, the citizen soldier has to believe that military and civilian values are perfectly interchangeable and contribute equally to the maintenance of peace. In a second sense, militarization is equally about permanently ritualizing sacrifices for a communitarian defence. We argue that while mostly successful, militarization also produces the tension arising from the need to appear pugnaciously vigilant while avoiding the casualties that must logically arise from heightened simulated combat. This tension is explained through two dimensions of ongoing crises: the parameters of a politically dramatized National Service ritual; and the constant propaganda of geopolitical dangers threatening the Republic. (Pac Rev/GIGA)