Clemens Hoffmann

Rethinking climate change, conflict and security

This special issue of Geopolitics presents a series of critical interventions on the links between global anthropogenic climate change, conflict and security. In this introduction, we situate the special issue by providing an assessment of the state of debate on climate security, and then by summarising the eight articles that follow. We observe, to start with, that contemporary climate security discourse is dominated by a problematic ensemble of policy-led framings and assumptions. And we submit that the contributions to this issue help rethink this dominant discourse in two distinct ways, offering both a series of powerful critiques, plus new interpretations of climate-conflict linkages which extend beyond Malthusian orthodoxy.

Water scarcity, conflict, and migration: a comparative analysis and reappraisal

How should we characterise the relations between environmental scarcity, conflict, and migration? Most academic and policy analyses conclude that scarcities of environmental resources can have significant impacts upon conflict and migration, and claim or imply that within the context of accelerating global environmental changes these impacts are likely to become more significant still. Many analyses admittedly recognise that these impacts are often indirect rather than direct and that there exist multiple ‘drivers’ of conflict and migration, of which environmental stresses are but one. We argue that even these qualifications do not go far enough, however: they still overstate the current and likely future significance of environmental changes and stresses in contributing to conflict and migration and underemphasise a far more important causal pathway—from conflict and migration to environmental vulnerabilities. These arguments are advanced via a comparative analysis of water—migration—conflict linkages in Cyprus and Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.

The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy

Abstract Turkey’s foreign policy activism has received mixed reviews. Some feel threatened by the alleged increasing Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, sometimes called ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which is seen as a significant revision of Turkey’s traditional transatlanticism. Others see Turkey as a stable democratic role model in a troubled region. This debate on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) remains dominated by a sense of confusion about what appear to be stark contradictions that are difficult to make sense of. Intervening in this debate, this article will develop an alternative perspective to existing accounts of Turkey’s new foreign policy. Offering a historical sociological approach to foreign policy analysis, it locates recent transformations in Turkey’s broader strategies of social reproduction. It subsequently argues that, contrary to claims about Turkey’s ‘axis shift‘, its changing foreign policies have in fact never been pro-Western or pro-American. All foreign policy ‘shifts’ and ‘inconsistencies’, we argue, are explicable in terms of historically changing strategies of social reproduction of the Ottoman and Turkish states responding to changing domestic and international conditions.

From Small Streams to Pipe Dreams – The Hydro-Engineering of the Cyprus Conflict

Abstract A 2008 water crisis triggered collective fears of droughts and long-term scarcities both north and south of the buffer zone dividing the Mediterranean island of Cyprus since 1974. Tectonic shifts in the island’s water management were the result. Central to export oriented agricultural production since British colonial days, water has always been a policy priority throughout independence, conflict and division for all administrations on the island. With discourses of scarcity and impending doom on the rise, policy makers north and south of the buffer zone started investing heavily in non-conventional high capacity water resources. Since October 2015 an underwater pipeline from the Turkish mainland supplies the north of the island with freshwater while the Republic of Cyprus has commissioned desalination plants through public private partnerships. This article argues that both the construction of the motherland’s “umbilical water cord” in the north as well as the “desalination rush” in the south are not just reactions to issues of environmental scarcity. It shows that Malthusian narratives of water scarcity leading to conflict are just as mistaken as liberal notions of scarcity leading to cooperation. Instead, relationships of power, rooted in post-colonial state formation, development, conflict and division have motivated financially costly but politically expedient investments in excess capacities, rather than improvement of water management. Both the northern and southern water infrastructure boom is understood within its geopolitical context of creating water as political capital in the peace process. This geo-politically conditioned over-engineering of water resources, finally, provides ample grounds for rethinking the relations between water, conflict and division more generally.

The ‘Rojava Revolution’ in Syrian Kurdistan: A Model of Development for the Middle East?

As the civil war in Syria continues, in the territory of Rojava – in Kurdish, ‘the West’ – the northern Syrian Kurdish political movement is attempting to implement ‘libertarian municipalism’, based on the thoughts of United States (US) anarchist Murray Bookchin. Since the withdrawal of Syrian regime forces in 2012, the movement has consolidated significant territorial gains as a US ally in the anti-Islamic State (IS) struggle, while simultaneously securing Russian support. Viewed with suspicion by Turkey, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, the geopolitical conditions of Rojava’s emergence are its greatest impediment. This article analyses Rojava’s model of rule and socioeconomic development, and its theory and practice in the context of the civil war, and regional Middle Eastern and wider global geopolitics. It reflects on Rojava’s place and meaning for contemporary geopolitics in the Middle East, and considers the territory’s prospects, discussing its transformative potential for an otherwise troubled region.

Imagining a Middle Eastern ‘International Society’? A reply to Ayla Göl

This is a reply to:Gol, Ayla. 2015. “Imagining the Middle East: The state, nationalism and regional international society.” Global Discourse 5 (3): 379–394. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/23269995.2015.1053191.