Justin V. Hastings

Charting the Course of Uyghur Unrest

What explains the course of Uyghur-related violence in Xinjiang and Central Asia since 1990? Using data derived from a variety of sources, I argue that the locations and types of violent incidents were influenced by a combination of Chinese government policies and the political geography of Xinjiang. Specifically, 1990 to 1996 were dominated by logistically complex incidents in a low-level violent campaign in Xinjiang. The Strike Hard campaign in 1996 brought about an increase in logistically simple incidents in Xinjiang and some violence in Central Asia as Uyghur separatists had trouble moving people, information and weapons across the well-guarded, difficult terrain of Xinjiangs borders. Chinas rapprochement with Central Asian countries in the late 1990s led after 2001 to a dramatic decrease in Uyghur-related violence in general, but also signalled the appearance of logistically creative attacks that required little planning or materials. My findings suggest that Uyghur rebels will have a difficult time mounting a large-scale violent campaign as long as China retains even minimal control of Xinjiang.

The fractured geopolitics of the United States in the Indian Ocean Region

Abstract In this article, I argue that the United States does not have a coherent geopolitical vision of the Indian Ocean Region. The result is an allocation of political and military resources that, with regard to the Indian Ocean Region as a whole, is fractured and at times incoherent, which makes it difficult for the United States to make a credible commitment to the security of the Indian Ocean Region as a whole. First, to the extent that the United States has an alliance structure in the Indian Ocean Region, it is composed of the residual relationships from other strategically important regions, thus decreasing their ability to be turned to the security of the Indian Ocean Region. Second, while the US Department of Defence rhetorically recognises the geopolitical importance of the Indian Ocean Region, there is no single US military command structure dedicated to the Indian Ocean Region. Third, the military forces that are prepositioned in the region are not insignificant, but are ill suited for making the necessary commitments to the region as a whole. This spatial distribution of resources has implications for the United States’ ability to make a credible claim that the Indian Ocean Region as a whole is at the core of its interests.

Perceiving a Single Chinese State : Escalation and Violence in Uighur Protests

Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 52, no. 1, January/February 2005, pp. 28–38.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION NETWORKS

This article uses a geographic approach to examine one aspect of the nuclear black market: the coordinators who bring buyers and sellers together, and transport goods between them. The most important factor in determining the geographical structure of a proliferation network is the network coordinators access (or lack thereof) to unique state resources. Coordinators with access to state resources and prerogatives can avoid embedding themselves in hostile countries or relying on commercial infrastructure, often leading to territorially diffuse logistical networks. Coordinators without such access are forced to rely on commercial infrastructure and favorable local political, economic, and social conditions, often resulting in territorially centralized logistical networks. This is illustrated through case studies of Abdul Qadeer Khans supply networks to Pakistan, Libya, and Iran. The article concludes with some observations about the implications of a geographical approach for understanding nuclear proliferation networks.

Understanding Maritime Piracy Syndicate Operations

In this article, I explain maritime piracy syndicates’ structure and behavior as based on two required inputs: the time needed between an attack and the realization of profit, and access to certain economic and security goods, namely a secure environment and market infrastructure. Pirates face two challenges. Internally, they must keep the organization together during the operation, a challenge I examine with a principal-agent framework to show how the inputs shape the security and control tradeoffs that exist, or not. Externally, pirates must maintain access to the external resources necessary for the success of their operation. I then turn to the adaptations in internal structure, targeting, and network connections that different types of pirate syndicates make to resolve principal-agent problems and external resource access problems during operations.

Target Hardening and Terrorist Signaling: The Case of Aviation Security

In this article, we examine the relationship between hardening a target and the value that a terrorist group derives from attacking it. We use a simple expected value framework to compare how the expected value of attacking a hardened target varies between a violence-based approach, where terrorists are presumed to be maximizing the physical damage done to the target, and a signaling-based approach, where terrorists are presumed to be maximizing the symbolic value of their attack. We argue that, if it is proper to understand terrorist attacks as costly signals of terrorist strength or determination, hardening a target actually increases the expected value of attacking a target (relative to its value before hardening), even if the attack fails. We go on to examine the evolution of aviation security, and trace how al-Qaedas views of airplanes and airports as targets have changed since 9/11. As aviation targets were hardened with increasingly onerous security measures, al-Qaeda began to see even attacks that did not result in detonation as successes, in large part because of what they signaled about al-Qaedas abilities, and the ability of al-Qaeda to impose costs on the U.S. and other countries even in the absence of explosions.

The trials and travails of the Islamic State in Pakistan

ABSTRACT While Pakistan is in many ways an ideal location for transnational terrorist groups due to state weakness, Islamic State has had difficulty making headway in the country. In this article, the authors argue that Islamic State’s failures in Pakistan are due to competition from other groups. Drawing on the terrorist competition literature and interviews with Pakistani counterterrorism officials, the authors find that the presence of other groups in Pakistan meant there was little demand for what Islamic State offered. Islamic State relied on splinter groups and defectors for recruitment, which alienated mainstream groups and harmed the group’s capacity. Islamic State’s competition problems were exacerbated by its internationalist ideology, which was at odds with that of many groups in Pakistan, and allowed opposing groups to present themselves as reasonable alternatives to other actors. Despite Islamic State’s lack of success, it and its allies have still engaged in extreme violence in Pakistan as a result of attempts to outbid other groups. This article has implications for fighting terrorism in Pakistan and more generally.

The Tortuga Disease: The Perverse Effects of Illicit Capital

Transnational crime brings substantial foreign capital into a number of fragile and developing states. Yet the economic and political impacts of such capital have rarely been studied due to the challenges of obtaining accurate data on illicit activities. We overcome this challenge by compiling a dataset on the amount and disbursement dates of ransom payments made by ship owners and insurers to Somali pirates from 2005 to 2012, along with sub-national commodity prices and trade flows in Somalia. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we hypothesize and find that ransoms have effects similar to those associated with the Dutch Disease. These effects include appreciating the local currency, decreasing export competitiveness, and increasing import dependence. The results illuminate a new channel through which illicit capital can undermine long-term economic development and foster an economic and political dependency on illicit sectors.

The economic geography of North Korean drug trafficking networks

ABSTRACT How has the involvement of the North Korean state influenced the geographic development of North Korean drug trafficking networks? In this paper, I use global value chain analysis to examine the characteristics of North Korean trade networks engaged in drug trafficking in two time periods during which state hostility toward drug trafficking varied markedly (from the early 1990s until 2005, when the central state encouraged production and trafficking, and since 2005, when North Korea cracked down on drugs). Access to a favourable institutional environment and state resources was associated with a spatial distribution of drug trafficking activities that was both territorially concentrated and territorially dispersed while the North Korean state sought to control as much of the value chain as possible. In the second period, the North Korean central state deprived many drug trafficking networks of state support, leading to networks with territorial distributions of production, distribution, and retail concentrated within both North Korea and adjacent countries, and more complex business relationships with various levels of the North Korean state, leading to a more distributed capture of value along the value chain.

INTRODUCTION: Asia Pacific going forward: a view from OCIS V

As one of the preeminent academic conferences on international studies in the Asia Pacific, the 2012 Oceanic Conference on International Studies, held at the University of Sydney (with co-sponsors at the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology, Sydney, and Macquarie University) from 18 to 20 July, played host to a large number of academics and international analysts who presented research on a variety of international studies topics. After a very successful conference in Auckland that emphasized the connection of the OCIS community to the Oceanic region, it seemed fitting that the conference would come to Sydney, the largest city in the Oceanic region, and one of the premier global cities in the Asia Pacific. In part because of the location of the conference, and because of the emphasis of many of the conference presentations on the Asia Pacific, no doubt inspired by underlying trends that are both exciting and worrying (sometimes at the same time), the organizers decided to focus this special issue of Global Change, Peace and Security on the challenges that the Asia Pacific faces, now and in the future. In short, this special issue is about the Asia Pacific going forward. The conference keynote address was given by Professor Michael Williams from the University of Ottawa, who critically evaluated contemporary challenges to the liberal international order. Professor Williams returned us to the very foundations of the discipline, challenging us to reconsider the canon of international relations and its impact on how we understand international politics. The breadth and depth of Professor Williams’ oration reminded us that how we tell our disciplinary history can shape how we view our work and our place in international relations. The conference comprised two and a half days of intense and stimulating discussions across 63 panels and roundtables. A total of 274 participants – from PhD students to emeritus professors – were involved in eight simultaneous streams ranging from international security, gender, international relations theory, ethics and international law, climate change and the environment, health, and international political economy. A high level of participation across panels and roundtables demonstrated the depth of interest in the future of our academic discipline, and the breadth of subjects being tackled by scholars of international studies. Elsewhere in this volume, for instance, a forum composed of papers from the conference provides commentary on the Occupy movement that emerged in September 2011. This forum offers creative engagement with the movement: charting its effect on political discourse; understanding the role of conspiracy theories in commentaries on the movement; questioning who the ‘99%’ are; asking whether the Occupy movement has successfully represented disparate groups; and interrogating the translation of popular ‘imaginings’ into concrete political action. The papers within the forum take diverse views on important questions for the movement, for example by expressing doubts