Siba N. Grovogui

Looking Beyond Spring for the Season: An African Perspective on the World Order after the Arab Revolt

There is much misunderstanding today about the decision of African countries not to endorse the military intervention in Libya undertaken by France, Great Britain, and the United States in conjunction with a few Arab States. This act of non-cooperation is the result of a tension that is much deeper and, contrary to punditry, goes to the core of the future of global governance and international morality today. This tension arises from two clashing positions: (1) the tendency of a fraction of states frequently self-designated as the West to usurp the mantle of international community, and (2) the longstanding objection from ‘Africa’ that the will of the international community may be appropriated by a small fractions of its constituents, however powerful. The underlying opposition extends today to all domains of international law, from the inception of law (in this case UN resolutions), to its interpretation and implementation, to the appreciation of its execution, or judgment. Hoy día hay un fuerte malentendido sobre la decisión de los países africanos de no apoyar a la intervención militar en Libia emprendida por Francia, Gran Bretaña y los Estados Unidos en conjunción con algunos estados árabes. Este acto de no cooperación es el resultado de una tensión que es más profunda, y contraria al pronóstico de los llamados expertos, que va al núcleo del futuro del gobierno global y la ética internacional actual. Esta tensión proviene de dos posiciones conflictivas: (1) la tendencia de una fracción de estados autodesignados frecuentemente como el occidente que usurpa la capa de la comunidad internacional, y (2) la perdurable objeción de ”África” a que la voluntad de la comunidad internacional pueda ser destinada a pequeñas fracciones de sus constituyentes, aún poderosas. La oposición subyacente se extiende hoy en día a todos los dominios de la ley internacional, desde el comienzo de la ley (en este caso, las resoluciones de las Naciones Unidas). 今天，对于非洲国家不同意法、英、美联手一些阿拉伯国家对利比亚进行军事干预的决定，仍然存在很大误解。这种不合作行为是一种紧张状态的结果，与专家意见相反，这种紧张正成为未来全球治理以及今日国际道德的核心。它产生于两种相互冲突的立场：(1)一部分惯常自命为西方的国家侵害国际共同体外表的倾向；（2）“非洲”长期存在的反对： 国际共同体的意志有可能被一小部分成员（不管多强大）所盗用。今天，潜在的反对正从法律（本例中即联合国决议）的开端延伸到国际法的所有领域。

The New Cosmopolitanisms: Subtexts, Pretexts and Context of Ethics

Violence takes many forms today. While theorists recognize the range of violence, a gap remains between this recognition and the solutions offered as panaceas to current conundrums. This article is a reflection on normative theory and its coming to grips with the diversity of the modern experience with violence and the multiplicity of perspectives on the means to bring about a lasting peace. Its aim is to discuss the appeal and limitations of the cosmopolitan notion of an ethics of engagement. The limitations, I argue, are due partly to the absence of methods for indexing and cataloguing comparable and concurrent thought forms bearing on ethics.1 It is my conviction that cosmopolitans would benefit greatly from intellectual agendas, beliefs, attitudes, values, institutions and idioms which, although not organically linked to theirs, seek to enhance ethical existence.

Oiling Tyranny? Neoliberalism and Global Governance in Chad

The “oil economy” and its structuring effects are the subjects of the article “Oiling Tyranny? Neoliberalism and Global Governance in Chad” by Siba N. Grovogui and Lori Leonard. The authors examine the agreement, between the state of Chad and the World Bank, to allow the building of a pipeline in Chad to be accompanied by a series of World Bank-orchestrated “good governance” initiatives. The article critically examines the Bank’s “trusteeship” in Chad, drawing on field research to question the monitoring role played by intellectuals and specialist NGOs. The authors map what they refer to as the “juridico-political terms of the oil economy,” which ensure and normalize the encroachment on state sovereignty, land expropriation, and the institutionalization of wealth transfer through resource extraction.

No Bridges to Swamps: A Postcolonial Perspective on Disciplinary Dialogue

It was fi tting that the annual convention of the International Studies Association, with its theme of ‘Building Bridges’, was held in San Francisco: the city of the famed Golden Gate Bridge. It is a magnifi cent bridge whose visuality easily interferes with our ability to imagine moral orders other than those constructed around it. A similar paradox surrounds the interdisciplinary bridges proposed at the 2008 convention. Owing to lack of space, I will not discuss specifi c panels at the convention. Rather, I will use the metaphor of the bridge to explore the conditions of dialogue (the actual settings of the bridge) and the possibilities and substance of dialogue: the destination, modes of being, and ways of life enabled by the bridge. Completed in 1937, the Golden Gate connects the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula to Marin County on the other side of the San Francisco Bay. The Bay opens to the Pacifi c Ocean and is the site of another bridge to the working-class city of Oakland: the Bay Bridge. The Bay is also home to Alcatraz Island, a small island rock of gardens, tide pools, bird colonies and sharks. The rock has served as a lighthouse and, beginning in the 1800s, a military fortifi cation and prison for Native Americans (1859–1934), a federal penitentiary (1934–63), and a national park (1976 to the present). Claims and counterclaims to the rock led to its ‘liberation’ from 1969 to 1972 by Native American activists. The Golden Gate also opens to predictable horizons. The strait over which the famed bridge stands ‘was named “Chrysopylae”, or Golden Gate, by John C. Fremont, Captain, topographical Engineer of the U.S. Army circa 1846 [because] it reminded him of a harbor in Istanbul named Chrysoceras or Golden Horn’. Indeed, while the Golden Gate Bridge was an engineering feat set in a New World, it was still wrapped in memories and rituals of an old cosmopolitan world full of possibilities and dangers, to wit Istanbul, or Constantinople, which bridged Europe and Asia, a place where Orthodox and other Christians cohabitated with Muslims, Jews and others. The Ottoman world produced actual bridges too. Among them, Stari Most was conceived by Mimar Hajrudin and built in 1566 in equal halves by Muslim and Christian craftsmen under the reign of Suleiman the Magnifi cent. For centuries this masterpiece of mediaeval masonry stood as a defi ning landmark in the Bosnian city of Mostar: ‘a pedestrian arch bridge over the Neretva River that gracefully connected the two sides of the city, symbolizing a link between cultures and religions that had coexisted for centuries’. Mostar was constructed and maintained in a spirit of togetherness (a key condition of substantive dialogue) and coexistence (based on respect for difference, diverse ways of life, and their modes of being and believing). Stari Most, which gained UNESCO World Heritage status, weathered tumultuous historical moments

The African foreign policy of secretary of state Henry Kissinger

issues she discusses are ‘deeply entwined with each other’ (198). She reiterates the link between conflict, terrorism, and political deficiencies including the lack of democracy, insecurity, and poor governance. She adds, however, that ordinary Africans may also be to blame due to the lack of a democratic culture, which includes tolerance of differences, civic values, and respect for the rule of law. She ends the book by urging Africans to consider what their national aspirations are, because the problems she has discussed will not be going away. Africa Today is a well-written and accessible book that outlines many important problems facing African countries. It would be a valuable addition to courses on African society, politics, and culture, especially at the undergraduate level. It would also be of interest to general readers wanting to know more about the challenges Africa faces today. Because it focuses mainly on the period since 1990, I would recommend it as a supplementary text to be read along with a text that provides a more in-depth historical and contextual background to the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence forces shaping contemporary African societies.

The Trouble with the Évolués: French Republicanism, Colonial Subjectivity, and Identity

It is now a cliche that the end of the Cold War offers an opportunity to rethink IR. Nonetheless, the cliche has bearing on international theorizing. To some, this rethinking has involved the incorporation into analysis of previously ignored actors, particularly nontraditional, nonstate, and transnational ones. Consistently, Yale Ferguson and Richard W. Mansbach have rightly suggested that IR theorists “conceive of global politics as involving a world of ‘polities’ rather than states and focus on the relationships among authority, identities, and ideology.” 1 They and others have argued rightly that studies of IR would be more interesting if they placed greater interest on “who and what controls which persons with regard to which issues, and why?” As well, they have argued that the manners and reasons that “political affiliations evolve and die and new ones emerge” ought to matter to theorists.2 Their recommended approach would highlight the fact that identity, power, and interest have historically been central to global realities (frequently dubbed international reality). It would also illuminate the cultural, temporal, and spatial dimensions of global politics: the bundles of contexts within which identity, power, and interests are constructed, mediated, contested, and otherwise.