James Gow

Shifting Securities: News Cultures, Multicultural Society and Legitimacy

Intersecting shifts in the nature of security challenges, the media environment, and of multicultural society have, in the past decade, in European polities such as the UK, offered conditions for the generation of overt ruptures in the interests and interpretations held by different sections of society. These differing interests and interpretations centre on perceptions of threats to security—the perceptions held by elected representatives, military policy-makers, journalists and news audiences-cum-citizens (and each of these categories is intensely heterogeneous). Disagreement exists on a number of axes, for instance, the type of security question afforded priority (is nuclear terrorism a greater threat than state restriction of liberties?), and the policy responses warranted by security risks and threats. Consequently, disagreement about the nature of security, generally, and what might be posited as a range of plural, particular security/insecurity dynamics, in itself, can contribute to fostering senses of insecurity. Community cohesion has become one of the principal security challenges of the early twenty-first century for policy-makers (Gow, 2007a) in multicultural societies such as the UK (Parekh, 1998, 2005, 2008). Yet challenges to community cohesion sometimes appear to result from security policy. Moreover, among those we studied, more concern was expressed about the precarious nature of citizenship and the erosion of rights and liberties than about community cohesion (Gillespie & OLoughlin, 2009). From whichever perspective one views the problem of security, disjuncture begets disjuncture (Appadurai, 2006). How, then, have multicultural society, the legitimacy of government and security policy, and, as we shall argue, news media, come into such apparently conflictual relations? This Ethnopolitics, Vol. 9, No. 2, 239–253, June 2010

Kosovo: the Final Frontier?: from Transitional Administration to Transitional Statehood

Abstract The declaration of independence by the Kosovo authorities on 17 February 2008 was an exception founded on an exception. A territory that had been subject to international humanitarian action that was, for many, regarded as being an unlawful action, exceptionally justified by a particular situation, had been placed under UN mandated transitional administration following that exceptional action. Transitional administration was also an exceptional situation: unlike other cases of international intervention and statebuilding, international actors took complete responsibility for the exercise of sovereign rights. The exception of transitional administration gave way not to a fully formed outcome but to a transitional state – one that was far from having the qualities of complete statehood, despite a claim to be independent and being backed by important and powerful Western actors. Kosovo has become a work in progress caught in a murky limbo – recognized by some states as sovereign and having independent international personality but not by the vast majority of others and blocked from membership of the UN and other international bodies because of the objections of many states and certain powerful ones. Thus, the attempt to create a ‘final frontier’ in the context of Yugoslavias dissolution and war not only failed to be complete and satisfactory in that context initially, but it was almost immediately a precedent for dangerous developments elsewhere. This is a principal argument in the present analysis that traces the incubatory framework of the international transitional administration in Kosovo against a background of international diplomacy and questions concerning status and statehood.

The ICTY, war crimes enforcement and Dayton: The ghost in the machine

Abstract Commitment to detaining war crimes suspects, particularly through military operations, was the key factor in Bosnias post-Dayton development. The decision in the mid-1990s to take arrests forward was the single most important element of the international strategy of peace implementation, with detentions in 1997 prefiguring and signposting the way for firm civilian implementation of the Bosnian peace by the High Representative, using authority strongly confirmed by the Peace Implementation Councils Sintra and Bonn meetings. Detention operations changed the strategic dynamic. While Bosnian progress remained slow, the war crimes action helped to create space for political cooperation and development, as well as for the kind of political coercion by the High Representative that would emerge half a year after the first detention operation. Without such action, international strategic momentum and credibility would not have been established, and Bosnias peace agreement stasis would probably have remained. The war crimes issue was therefore the ‘ghost in the machine’ driving the positive evolution of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton peace accords.

The new Clausewitz? War, force, art and utility – Rupert Smith on 21st century strategy, operations and tactics in a comprehensive context

Recent years have seen Western, in particular, and international armed forces, generally, confront a range of awkward problems of international security that constitute the first pages of a new period in the history of warfare. Those Western and international forces, deployed almost exclusively in alliance, coalition or partnership, rather than as the pure instrument of one government’s diplomatic and political purpose, have often struggled to deal with the cases with which they were confronted – Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and so on. Many critics and practitioners have responded to these events in different ways, some better and more successfully than others – but none in a

Independent Ukraine: the Politics of Security

Independent Ukraine is central to the new security agenda in Europe. This is true at both the conceptual and practical levels. At the practical level, the future of the continent’s security in very large part depends on the reiationship between Russia and Ukraine, the two most important republics in the Soviet Union and the most powerful of the successor states.’ There is danger in this relationship for the whole of Europe at either end of a spectrum of possibilities: a close military alliance, or war. One would cast the shadow of a large armed force across the whole of Europe in effect a return to something akin to ’the

Deep history and international security: social conditions and competition, militancy and violence in West Africa

Concern about terrorism in, and from, West Africa has prompted both military responses and criticisms of these. Criticism has focused on ‘hegemonic’ international attention to the region, the inappropriateness of a military and a misplaced focus on religion, and specifically Islam, where a range of ethnic, social, economic and historical problems are said to have been the real factors incubating radicalisation and violence—although empirical evidence to support this assertion was absent. We argue that a more nuanced and variegated approach is needed. On one side, contrary to the critics, we show: why international attention is warranted and inevitable, with a specific link to international terrorism (as well as local contexts) since 2001, and why a militarised approach is also relevant; why Islam and a religious focus cannot be completely ignored in assessing militancy and violence in West Africa. On the other, we use original qualitative empirical research to explore beliefs, values and attitudes in the region, which reveals that, across the region, a variety of social issues and perceptions of history are regarded as being salient factors in radicalisation—whether or not that radicalisation leads to violence. Notable among these are a ‘youth bulge’ and youth disaffection and perceptions (no matter their empirical accuracy) concerning the ‘deep history’ of colonialism in the region.

The Milošević trial: purpose and performance

The trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is a vehicle both for achieving justice and for pursuing historical truth. At this first-ever trial of a former head of state before an international tribunal, the same evidence serves two purposes: the quests for ‘“truth” by those involved in the judicial process, on one side, and those engaged in academic historical interpretation, on the other. In each sphere, there are expectations to be satisfied. Those of the peoples of Serbia and the other former Yugoslav lands, international governmental and non-governmental actors, and observers are all different from each other; and they are all distinct from the viewpoint of future students of history. The two frameworks for truth are neither necessarily competitive nor complementary, and the tests of their validity may differ. But the raw material they use may be identical and the outcome of each may be parallel and consistent. And the two varieties of truth may reinforce one another in the quest to restore peace and security, to establish justice, and to compile a broadly accepted account of contentious, awful events. The present article assesses the performance of those at the Tribunal, particularly that of the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), in the contexts of judicial process, on the one hand, and historical record, on the other. On the basis of the evidence presented so far, is the Milošević trial more useful as a judicial process that might foster peace and security, or as a gathering of material that can lead to a more or less undisputable account of events? Our response is that the balance, at the end of the prosecution case, lay with the historical record rather than the quest for justice. We begin by considering the purposes for the establishment of the ICTY. Then we examine the problems faced by the prosecution in carrying out the Tribunal’s entwined missions of criminal justice and peace and security and the limited achievements of the Prosecutor. We continue by examining the value of empirical evidence, mainly resulting from witnesses appearing in the Trial Chamber. In doing so, we follow the view both of the Prosecutor, as accepted by the Trial Chamber, and of our own earlier work, that we are dealing with one war. We seek, therefore, to avoid the somewhat incomplete and casual understanding of many observers that there was a series of discrete wars because armed conflict occurred in different theatres and at different times. Following the chronology of the Prosecutor’s case, rather than that of events, we consider the Kosovo phase first, then Croatia and Bosnia. In the end, we augment our conclusion that, at the end of the prosecution case, the historical

Shifting securities: theory, practice and methodology: a response to powers, croft and noble

In the past decade, it is through the nexus of media, security and multiculturalism that political tensions have been most acutely felt and played out, especially in Western societies and cultures. Regrettably, social scientific understanding and evidence of this particular nexus have been lacking, with usually untested claims and generalizations regularly being made about the relationship between the putative power of media, the emergence of new security dilemmas and the proclaimed demise of multiculturalism. In this context, we are heartened by the positive reception in Ethnopolitics to our presentation of the ‘Shifting Securities’ project from a range of leading commentators from around the world and reflecting the diverse fields that feed into our research—media and cultural studies, security studies, ethnic and racial studies and the sociology and anthropology of transnationalism. The respondents identify the project as offering a novel and ‘innovative’ (Powers) framework for getting at these relationships in order to understand how these shape legitimacy, trust, democratic engagement and other critical outcomes and, in some instances, point to ways of enhancing our approach. In this short commentary we take the opportunity to amplify some points and respond to others by reference to further examples of work by members of the team, as well developing discussion of key points on theory and methodology.

Strategic Pedagogy and Pedagogic Strategy

Despite trends to consider film in the context of international relations, there has been very little real focus on how filmic sources can assist the understanding of war and peace. There is merit in analysing film in its own right; however, beyond this it can be a useful device for teaching and researching particular wars and aspects of them, as well as the relationship of film to war in general. This is demonstrated here by reference to the films about the Yugoslav War of the 1990s. However, exploring the detail of combat or cause or social impact in a particular conflict is not the only role film can play in teaching or research strategies. It is within the power of the moving image medium to explore the very essence and character of both a particular war and the very nature of war itself. This is shown to be the case with Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now, where the constant tussle between escalation and ethics, which underpins the conceptual frames of strategy, relating ends and means, is evident. War ceases to be war if the restraints are removed. When they are, the ‘river of escalation’ leads into the dark-hearted loss of soul, the critical loss of political perspective and purpose and the apocalypse of futility.

Kosovo after the Holbrooke‐Milosevic agreement. What now?

(1998). Kosovo after the Holbrooke‐Milosevic agreement. What now? The International Spectator: Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 17-22.