tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/militarism-9601/articlesMilitarism – The Conversation2023-07-25T15:35:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102952023-07-25T15:35:30Z2023-07-25T15:35:30ZRussia summit is an opportunity for Africa to unite on Ukraine and get Wagner out of the continent<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538996/original/file-20230724-29-58bny6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=32%2C0%2C528%2C352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (left), Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2019 Russia-Africa summit in Sochi.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two critical issues must be top of mind for African leaders when they meet President Vladimir Putin at the <a href="https://summitafrica.ru/en/">second Russia-Africa summit</a> in St Petersburg this week.</p>
<p>First, they should be concerned that they don’t have a common position on the Russian-Ukraine war. The second issue of concern is the presence of Wagner group mercenaries in African conflicts. </p>
<p>As I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/africas-russia-ukraine-peace-mission-what-can-it-achieve-206201">previously written</a> on African efforts to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine, African voices are important in using their neutrality in contributing toward a peaceful settlement to the conflict. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/african-countries-showed-disunity-in-un-votes-on-russia-south-africas-role-was-pivotal-180799">African countries showed disunity in UN votes on Russia: South Africa's role was pivotal</a>
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<p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=X66DapgAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of international politics</a> who has written on major power engagements in Africa and on <a href="https://blog.prif.org/2023/07/21/an-african-peace-initiative-in-the-russia-ukraine-war/">Africa’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war</a>. In my view, this summit serves as an opportunity for African nations to bury their divisions on the Russia-Ukraine war. These were heightened during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/african-countries-showed-disunity-in-un-votes-on-russia-south-africas-role-was-pivotal-180799">votes</a> in the United Nations General Assembly in 2022. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65951350">June 2023 African Peace Initiative</a> by seven African leaders to Russia and Ukraine was a bold opening effort to find peace in a war that has created a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-5-things-c183ddfe6c140393464d3e0c3828c328">humanitarian and economic crisis</a>. The African mission comprised South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, Comoros Azali Assoumani, Senegal’s Macky Sall, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema.</p>
<p>But there have been some misgivings that the African peace initiative was not endorsed by the African Union, and <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/africas-ukraine-russia-mediation-needed-a-clearer-au-footprint">excluded major African players</a>. A formal statement at the summit in support of the peace initiative would remove doubts on its legitimacy.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-russia-is-growing-its-strategic-influence-in-africa-110930">How Russia is growing its strategic influence in Africa</a>
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<p>Despite the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/21/a-failed-african-peace-mission-to-ukraine-and-russia/">widespread scepticism</a> that greeted the African peace initiative, it made a strong case for peace to Russia and Ukraine. It has emboldened and opened doors for further diplomatic attempts by other global players. </p>
<p>The St Petersburg <a href="https://summitafrica.ru/en/">Russia-Africa summit</a> should be an opportunity for Africa to put pressure on Russia to start unlocking some of the key issues raised in the <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/african-peace-mission-one-step-forward-one-step-back">10-point peace plan</a> tabled by the African leaders. </p>
<p>In recent phone calls with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy <a href="https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3738446-zelensky-has-firstever-phone-call-with-ethiopia-pm-talks-disruption-grain-initiative-by-russia.html">showed more enthusiasm</a> for the African peace plan. This is vital because during the June visit to Kyiv, the Ukrainian authorities were less enthusiastic about the African plan.</p>
<h2>Russian mercenaries in Africa</h2>
<p>Second, African participants at the St Petersburg summit must make their collective voice heard on <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/wagner-group/t-64194288">Wagner Group</a> mercenaries in African conflicts. </p>
<p>The lead-up to the summit coincided with reports that Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, planned to relocate most of his mercenaries to Africa. This <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/world/africa/2023-07-19-wagner-boss-tells-fighters-in-belarus-to-prepare-for-africa/">after falling out with Moscow in June</a> when Wagner forces launched a <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/failed-wagner-rebellion-russia-battle-thugs-former-us/story?id=100379683">failed mutiny</a> against the Russian government. </p>
<p>Wagner mercenaries have a substantive presence in the Central African Republic, Chad, Libya, Mali and Sudan. They have been accused of gross human rights violations and natural resource exploitation. In March 2022 they, alongside local forces, took part in the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-russias-wagner-group-doing-africa">massacre of about 500 people as well as rape and torture</a>. More abuses by the Wagner group forces have been reported in the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/20/africa/wagner-sudan-russia-libya-intl/index.html">ongoing civil war in Sudan</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/wagner-group-mercenaries-in-africa-why-there-hasnt-been-any-effective-opposition-to-drive-them-out-207318">Wagner group mercenaries in Africa: why there hasn't been any effective opposition to drive them out</a>
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<p>At the St Petersburg summit, African leaders should remind President Putin that the Wagner Group is not Russia’s best export to Africa. Moreover, it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/wagner-group-mercenaries-in-africa-why-there-hasnt-been-any-effective-opposition-to-drive-them-out-207318">not a friend of Africa</a>. This includes those regimes that invited it into their domestic conflicts. A consistent policy of building bridges in Africa would begin with President Putin’s condemnation of the mayhem of the Wagner Group in Africa. </p>
<p>A clear statement at the summit on threats from mercenaries would put pressure on African countries to seek peaceful approaches to their domestic conflicts. This would be a major achievement of the summit. It would dovetail with the long-standing <a href="https://au.int/sites/default/files/treaties/37287-treaty-0009_-_oau_convention_for_the_elimination_of_mercenarism_in_africa_e.pdf">African Convention on Mercenaries</a> that African states signed in Libreville in 1977, and came into effect <a href="https://au.int/en/treaties/convention-elimination-mercenarism-africa">in April 1985</a>.</p>
<h2>Towards a new relationship?</h2>
<p>Russia needs the summit to help it win more friends in Africa. But it should also be aware of concerns that it is unable to compete with the west and China in Africa because it <a href="https://africacenter.org/spotlight/using-africa-russia-summit/">does not bring any tangible resources to the table</a>. Although at the <a href="https://summitafrica.ru/en/news/podvedeny-itogi-pervogo-sammita-i-ekonomicheskogo-foruma-rossija-afrika-roskongress-prodolzhit-rabotu-na-afrikanskom-treke-v-period-do-sledujuschego-foruma/">2019 Sochi summit</a> Putin claimed that he would seek to engage in “competition for cooperation with Africa”, none of this <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-steadily-rebuilding-presence-in-africa/6452193.html">has materialised beyond military investements in conflict areas</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-africa-summit-provides-a-global-stage-for-moscow-to-puff-up-its-influence-209982">Russia-Africa summit provides a global stage for Moscow to puff up its influence</a>
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<p>The St Petersburg summit is billed as an economic and humanitarian forum. The African leaders need to impress upon President Vladimir Putin that the most immediate humanitarian act he can take would be to allow exports of Ukrainian grain and fertilisers through the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative">Black Sea</a>. This is part of the 10-point African peace initiative.</p>
<p>Perhaps to entice more African states to attend the summit, President Putin has offered to <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2023/07/24/putin-says-russia-will-replace-ukrainian-grain-shipments-to-africa">replace Ukraine’s grain supplies to Africa</a> with Russia’s grain, food products and fertilisers. But this unilateral promise is unlikely to meet all of Africa’s needs. </p>
<p>It would also leave out other nations that depend on Ukrainian grain and fertilisers. For this reason, African states need to lean on Putin to renew the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/black-sea-grain-initiative">Black Sea Grain Initiative</a>, which permitted the exports of grains and fertilisers to the world. </p>
<p>In addition, African states should use the collective weight of the continent to nudge President Putin to commit to a speedy end to the war.</p>
<p>Probably to lower the expectation of African participants at the summit, President Putin has spoken in modest terms about building national human resources capacity and inviting Africans to a <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71719">global youth festival</a> in Russia next year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210295/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gilbert M. Khadiagala does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African must make its collective voice heard on Russian mercenaries in African conflicts.Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations and Director of the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1790632022-03-30T12:39:06Z2022-03-30T12:39:06ZYes, Putin and Russia are fascist – a political scientist shows how they meet the textbook definition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455087/original/file-20220329-13-1i0hsmb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C23%2C7924%2C4766&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin on stage during a rally in Moscow on March 18, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-attends-a-concert-marking-news-photo/1239294261?adppopup=true">Sergei Guneyev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Vladimir Putin <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-russia-news-vladimir-putin-orders-attack-as-explosions-are-reported.html">unleashed an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022</a>, the Ukrainian media, public and policymakers almost unanimously began calling the Russian president and the state he leads “rashyst.” The term is a hybrid of a derogatory moniker for Russia – “rasha” – and “fascist.”</p>
<p>Ukrainians did so for two reasons. First, they were countering Putin’s absurd insistence that the Ukrainian authorities – including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/02/25/zelensky-family-jewish-holocaust/">Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy</a> – <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-claim-to-rid-ukraine-of-nazis-is-especially-absurd-given-its-history-177959">were Nazis</a> and that Ukraine needed to be “de-Nazified.” Since <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/1/who-are-the-azov-regiment">Ukraine’s tiny number of right-wing extremists</a> are about as influential as the Proud Boys in the United States, what Putin really had in mind was Ukrainians with a distinct Ukrainian identity. De-Nazification thus meant de-Ukrainianization.</p>
<p>Second, Ukrainians were drawing attention to those features of Putin’s Russia that indicated that it was fascist and thus in need of “de-Nazification.” Putin’s Russia was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/europe/russia-ukraine-propaganda-censorship.html">aggressive, anti-democratic</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-public-approval-is-soaring-during-the-russia-ukraine-crisis-but-its-unlikely-to-last-177302">enamored of Putin himself</a>. Unsurprisingly, his Russia’s resemblance to the regimes built by Mussolini and Hitler had not gone unnoticed by <a href="https://archive.transatlanticrelations.org/publication/putins-russia-moderate-fascist-state-vladislav-inozemtsev/">Russian</a> and Western <a href="https://asiaabc.news/2022/02/28/is-putins-russia-fascist/">analysts</a> in the last decade or so. </p>
<p>Few policymakers, scholars and journalists listened, however, as the term fascism struck <a href="https://www.illiberalism.org/marlene-laruelle-is-russia-fascist-unraveling-propaganda-east-and-west/">many</a> as too vague, too political or too loaded to serve as an accurate description of any repressive regime. Having written about <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/48610431">Putin’s Russia as quasi- or proto-fascist </a>already in the mid-2000s, I know from personal experience that few took my claims seriously, often arguing tautologically that Putin had constructed a “Putinist” system. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://www.newark.rutgers.edu/about-us/have-you-met-rutgers-newark/alexander-motyl">political scientist who studies Ukraine, Russia and the USSR empirically, theoretically and conceptually</a>, I believe Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine suggests that a reconsideration of the term’s applicability to Russia is definitely in order.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a dark cloth coat next to a line of soldiers, several of whom are carrying wreaths." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454989/original/file-20220329-4070-equaid.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One day before his army invaded Ukraine, Russian President Putin attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day in Moscow on Feb. 23, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-attends-a-wreath-laying-news-photo/1238699927?adppopup=true">Alexey Nikolsky/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Defining fascist states</h2>
<p>But, first, a brief foray into the classification schemes that social scientists like to use, which most people find incomprehensible.</p>
<p>Classifications are essential for good social science, because they enable scholars to group political systems according to their shared features and to explore what makes them tick. <a href="https://findanyanswer.com/what-were-aristotles-six-types-of-government">Aristotle</a> was one of the first to divide systems into those ruled by one, those ruled by a few and those ruled by many.</p>
<p>Contemporary scholars <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-system/Issues-of-classification">usually classify states as being democratic, authoritarian or totalitarian</a>, with each category having a variety of subtypes. Democracies have parliaments, judiciaries, parties, political contestation, civil societies, freedom of speech and assembly, and elections. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/authoritarianism">Authoritarian states</a> rest on the state bureaucracy, military and secret police; they usually circumscribe most of the features of democracies; and they typically are led by juntas, generals or politicians who avoid the limelight. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/totalitarianism#:%7E:text=Totalitarianism%20is%20a%20form%20of,does%20not%20permit%20individual%20freedom.">Totalitarian states</a> abolish all the features of democracy, empower their bureaucracies, militaries and secret police to control all of public and private space, promote all-encompassing ideologies and always have a supreme leader.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Common-characteristics-of-fascist-movements">Fascist states</a> share all the features of authoritarianism, and they may also share the features of totalitarianism, but with two key differences. <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/19/17847110/how-fascism-works-donald-trump-jason-stanley">Fascist leaders have genuine charisma</a> – that ephemeral quality that produces popular adulation – and they promote that charisma and the image that goes with it in personality cults. The people genuinely love fascist leaders, and the leaders in turn <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Introduction-to-Political-Theory/Graham-Hoffman/p/book/9781408285923">present themselves as embodiments of the state, the nation, the people</a>.</p>
<p>The bare-bones <a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article-abstract/49/1/25/599/Putin-s-Russia-as-a-fascist-political-system?redirectedFrom=fulltext">definition</a> of a fascist state is thus this: It is an authoritarian state ruled by a charismatic leader enjoying a personality cult. </p>
<p>Seen in this light, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain/Francos-Spain-1939-75">Franco’s Spain</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/pinochet/overview.htm">Pinochet’s Chile</a> and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Colonels">Greece of the colonels</a> were really just your average authoritarian states. In contrast, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/world-war-iis-less-famous-fascist/2020/12/31/b124694a-3e37-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html">Mussolini’s Italy</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/china-authoritarian-fascism-totalitarian-uyghurs-surveillance/">Xi Jinping’s China</a> are clearly fascist, as were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/31/china-authoritarian-fascism-totalitarian-uyghurs-surveillance/">Hitler’s Germany</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@arthurtruth0716/joseph-stalin-the-fascist-dictator-who-betrayed-communism-9d2c81b93c49">Stalin’s USSR</a>. Fascist states can thus be on the right and on the left.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men in military uniforms, with medals on their chests. One man wears a Nazi swastika armband." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454990/original/file-20220329-4070-jdgcso.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), German and Italian fascist dictators.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/adolph-hitler-and-benito-mussolini-german-and-italian-news-photo/113634229?adppopup=true">Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>‘Dismantled’ democratic institutions</h2>
<p><a href="https://online.ucpress.edu/cpcs/article-abstract/49/1/25/599/Putin-s-Russia-as-a-fascist-political-system?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Putin’s Russia also fits the bill</a>. The political system is unquestionably authoritarian – some might say totalitarian. </p>
<p>Putin has <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-putin-lead-the-way-in-exploiting-democracys-lost-promise-94798">completely dismantled</a> all of Russia’s nascent democratic institutions. <a href="https://theconversation.com/vladimir-putin-plans-to-win-russias-parliamentary-election-no-matter-how-unpopular-his-party-is-160078">Elections are neither free nor fair</a>. Putin’s party, <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-parliamentary-win-by-putins-united-russia-has-been-years-in-the-manufacturing-168351">United Russia, always wins</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-vladimir-putin-and-other-autocrats-ruthlessly-repressing-the-opposition-is-often-a-winning-way-to-stay-in-power-159605">oppositionists are routinely harassed or killed</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-has-kremlin-battling-for-hearts-and-minds-at-home-177991">media have been curbed</a>; <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/28/anti-war-protesters-jailed-freedom-speech-russia/6947053001/">freedom of speech and assembly no longer exists</a>; and <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-autocrats-like-vladimir-putin-ruthless-repression-is-often-a-winning-way-to-stay-in-power-156172">draconian punishments are meted out</a> for the slightest of criticisms of the regime. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-rise-in-nationalism-in-putins-russia-threatens-the-countrys-science-again-41403">hypernationalist</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-fresh-warning-that-africa-needs-to-be-vigilant-against-russias-destabilising-influence-178785">imperialist and supremacist ideology</a> that glorifies all things Russian and <a href="https://theconversation.com/settler-colonialism-helps-explain-current-events-in-xinjiang-and-ukraine-and-the-history-of-australia-and-us-too-176975">legitimates expansion as Russia’s right and duty</a> has been both imposed on and willingly accepted by the population. </p>
<p>War is worshipped and justified by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-invasion-of-ukraine-has-kremlin-battling-for-hearts-and-minds-at-home-177991">state’s mendacious propaganda machine</a>. As the brutal invasion of Ukraine shows, war is also practiced, especially if it is directed against a people whose very existence Putin regards as a threat to himself and to Russia. </p>
<p>Finally, secret police and military elites, together with a corrupt bureaucracy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/meet-russias-oligarchs-a-group-of-men-who-wont-be-toppling-putin-anytime-soon-178474">form the core of the political system</a> headed by the infallible Putin, who is the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/14/lets-call-putin-fascist-autocrat-00016982">undisputed charismatic leader glorified as the embodiment of Russia</a>. One of Putin’s minions once <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/10/23/no-putin-no-russia-says-kremlin-deputy-chief-of-staff-a40702">noted</a> that “if there is no Putin, there is no Russia!” There’s a striking similarity with French King Louis XIV’s <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/l%27%C3%A9tat,%20c%27est%20moi">assertion</a>, “L’état, c’est moi” – “The state is me” – and <a href="https://archive.org/details/AdolfHitlerEinVolkEinReichEinFuhrer">Hitler’s</a> “One people, one empire, one Führer.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.routledge.com/Presidents-Oligarchs-and-Bureaucrats-Forms-of-Rule-in-the-Post-Soviet/Klein-Schroder-Stewart/p/book/9781138278790">Fascist states are unstable</a>. Personality cults disintegrate with time, as <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23210461">leaders grow old</a>. Today’s <a href="https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/956120/is-vladimir-putin-ill">Putin, with his bloated face</a>, is no match for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/26/world/europe/vladimir-putin-russia.html">vigorous Putin of 20 years ago</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html">Fascist regimes are overcentralized</a>, and the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin">information that reaches the supreme leader</a> is often sugarcoated. <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/18/russia-putin-ukraine-war-three-weeks/">Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine</a> may have been partly due to his lacking accurate information about the condition of the Ukrainian and Russian armies. </p>
<p>Finally, fascist states are prone to wars, because members of the secret police and generals, whose raison d'etre is violence, are <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-science-terms-and-concepts/fascism">overrepresented in the ruling elite</a>. In addition, <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-25-4-mussolini-and-the-rise-of-fascism.html">the ideology glorifies war and violence</a>, and a militarist fervor helps to legitimate the supreme leader and reinforce his charisma. </p>
<p>Fascist states usually prosper at first; then, intoxicated by victory, they make mistakes and start losing. <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-russia-president-1999-chechnya-apartment-bombings/30097551.html">Putin won decisively in his wars in Chechnya</a> <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-georgia-war-fifth-anniversary-/25068841.html">and in Georgia</a>, and he <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/measuring-out-putins-defeat-in-ukraine-russia-war-miscalculation-liberate-battle-nato-11648236532?mod=opinion_featst_pos3">appears to be headed for defeat</a> in Ukraine.</p>
<p>I believe Putin’s fascist Russia faces a serious risk of breakdown in the not-too-distant future. All that’s missing is a spark that will rile the people and elites and move them to take action. That could be an increase in fuel prices, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/08/1071198056/theres-chaos-in-kazakhstan-heres-what-you-need-to-know">the development that led to a citizen revolt in Kazakhstan</a> earlier this year; <a href="https://apnews.com/article/international-news-ap-top-news-europe-72e43a8b9e4c56362d4c1d6393bd54fb">a blatantly falsified election, such as the one that led to riots in autocratic Belarus</a> in 2020; or thousands of body bags returning to Russia from the war in Ukraine.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Motyl does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Russia invaded Ukraine, its leader was immediately labeled “fascist” by Ukrainians and others. A political scientist explains why that label fits.Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1754122022-02-02T22:01:26Z2022-02-02T22:01:26ZUS troops head to Eastern Europe: 4 essential reads on the Ukraine crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444128/original/file-20220202-27-1rpv0cj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4728%2C2689&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A US soldier at a training area in Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/soldier-stands-at-a-tank-type-m1a2-sep-which-are-decorated-news-photo/530688706?adppopup=true">Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American troops <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/02/world/ukraine-russia-news">are heading to Eastern Europe</a> in the latest countermove by the U.S. to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/us/politics/russia-ukraine-invasion-pentagon.html">Russia’s military buildup</a> on the country’s border with Ukraine.</p>
<p>The development, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/politics/us-troops-europe-russia/index.html">announced on Feb. 2, 2022</a>, will see around 3,000 additional U.S. service personnel deployed to NATO member states Germany, Poland and Romania.</p>
<p>U.S. officials framed the move as one that would reassure countries in the NATO military alliance of U.S. support in the face of a possible invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member. But it is likely to anger President Vladimir Putin, who has demanded that NATO <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3164305/russia-wants-nato-troops-out-bulgaria-and-romania">pull back troops</a> from Eastern European countries that were once members of the Soviet Union. Putin has accused the West of ignoring Russia’s security concerns and trying to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-announces-plan-boost-army-foreign-leaders-rally-2022-02-01/">lure the country into a war</a>.</p>
<p>Behind the rhetoric and troop movement is a very real – and complex – crisis. The Conversation’s bank of experts has been on hand to explain what is at stake, and why Ukraine has become a flashpoint between Russia and the West.</p>
<h2>1. What it means to have US boots on the ground</h2>
<p>The deployment of thousands of American troops to Eastern Europe wasn’t unexpected. The Pentagon had already said that it was prepared to send up to 8,500 additional members of its armed services to the region.</p>
<p>It marks a reversal of a trend in Europe that has seen America’s military presence dwindle over the past few decades, say <a href="https://www.boisestate.edu/sps-politicalscience/faculty/michael-a-allen/">Michael Allen of Boise State University</a> and two scholars from Kansas State University, <a href="https://www.k-state.edu/polsci/faculty-staff/martinezmachain-carla.html">Carla Martinez Machain</a> and <a href="https://www.k-state.edu/polsci/faculty-staff/Flynn.html">Michael Flynn</a>.</p>
<p>The three scholars note that <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-military-presence-in-europe-has-been-declining-for-30-years-the-current-crisis-in-ukraine-may-reverse-that-trend-175595">U.S. troop numbers in Europe</a> stood at a high of over 400,000 in the 1950s. But this dropped sharply after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.</p>
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<div class="placeholder-container" style="--aspect-ratio-percent:75.06631299734748%;--background-color:#a1665e"><img alt="" class=" ls-is-cached lazyloaded" data-src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=754&fit=clip" data-srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442365/original/file-20220124-27-1x6ja1g.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&w=754&fit=clip"></div>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">US military deployments to European states, 1989-2021.</span>
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<p>In the post-Soviet era, U.S. troop presence in Europe has been a delicate matter, the scholars note: “The U.S. and Russia have historically been cautious in not placing troops in places that would be considered a provocation. They generally avoid each other’s sphere of influence, even when responding to the other’s deployments. Yet the NATO allies in Eastern Europe, many of which were once Soviet satellite states, provide a gray area that both the U.S. and Russia may view as within their own sphere of influence.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-military-presence-in-europe-has-been-declining-for-30-years-the-current-crisis-in-ukraine-may-reverse-that-trend-175595">The US military presence in Europe has been declining for 30 years – the current crisis in Ukraine may reverse that trend</a>
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<h2>2. What it means to be a NATO member</h2>
<p>The reason U.S. troops are heading to Germany, Poland and Romania, and not to Ukraine itself, is that the former Soviet country isn’t a member of NATO. As <a href="https://www.clarkson.edu/people/alastair-kocho-williams">Alastair Kocho-Williams at Clarkson University</a> writes, this <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-nato-and-why-does-ukraine-want-to-join-175821">isn’t out of a lack of desire on Ukraine’s part</a>.</p>
<p>“Membership with NATO would significantly increase Ukraine’s international military backing, allowing for NATO military action within Ukraine and alongside members of its military. This guarantee of military might would act as a firm deterrent to Russian aggression,” Kocho-Williams writes.</p>
<p>In fact, NATO’s principle of “collective defense” – under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all – is, the U.S. says, the very reason American troops are heading to Poland and Romania. It is out of the NATO commitment to protect members – the implication being that an invasion of Ukraine could possibly mean that NATO states bordering Russia could be next.</p>
<p>But Kocho-Williams cautions that allowing Ukraine to join the military alliance now may pose a problem. “The threat of an imminent conflict between Ukraine and Russia would commit NATO to take military action against Russia,” he writes.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-nato-and-why-does-ukraine-want-to-join-175821">What's NATO, and why does Ukraine want to join?</a>
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<h2>3. How the Russian media might view this troop move</h2>
<p>The U.S. stated aim in deploying troops to Eastern Europe – to reassure NATO members – was <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-orders-us-troop-deployments-reassure-nato-allies/story?id=82622507">reported faithfully</a> by the American media. It is unlikely that Russian newspapers and TV news broadcasts will present it in the same way.</p>
<p>Cynthia Hooper at College of the Holy Cross says that <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-just-a-panic-attack-russian-media-blames-us-for-escalating-ukraine-crisis-175482">the Russian media</a> have portrayed the U.S. as being “hysterical” in its insistence that Putin is hell-bent on invasion. Writes Hooper, “Joe Biden, Russian reporters claim, is building up a false sense of threat from Moscow to deflect attention away from domestic problems.”</p>
<p>Whether the Russian public is buying this line from state-controlled media is, however, another matter. For many, there are bigger things to worry about. Hooper quotes a Russian friend who told her that people “are sick and tired of those endless political TV shows about the Ukraine; they are absolutely indifferent to international issues.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-just-a-panic-attack-russian-media-blames-us-for-escalating-ukraine-crisis-175482">It's just a 'panic attack' – Russian media blames US for escalating Ukraine crisis</a>
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<h2>4. Will deployment deter Putin?</h2>
<p>The question is whether the U.S. troop buildup in Eastern Europe will succeed where international agreements have failed; will it deter Putin from transgressing Ukraine’s border?</p>
<p>In 2014, Russia <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-crisis-in-Crimea-and-eastern-Ukraine">annexed the Crimean peninsula</a>. It was an illegal military land grab – and one that contravened the Budapest Memorandum, a 1994 commitment in which Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. pledged to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.”</p>
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<p>Part of the the problem, as <a href="https://www.law.indiana.edu/about/people/bio.php?name=feinstein-lee-a">Lee Feinstein of Indiana University</a> and <a href="https://www.belfercenter.org/person/mariana-budjeryn">Mariana Budjeryn at Harvard Kennedy School</a> note, is that <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-got-a-signed-commitment-in-1994-to-ensure-its-security-but-can-the-us-and-allies-stop-putins-aggression-now-173481">the memorandum is not legally binding</a>. Even if it were, it might not have been enough to stay Putin’s hand.</p>
<p>“International law matters, but it does not determine what states do.
Strong deterrence, diplomacy and international solidarity can influence Russian decision-making. … Ultimately, however, the de-escalation decision is Russia’s to make,” Feinstein and Budjeryn write. All the U.S. can do is make clear to the Kremlin the consequences of its actions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-got-a-signed-commitment-in-1994-to-ensure-its-security-but-can-the-us-and-allies-stop-putins-aggression-now-173481">Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin's aggression now?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175412/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
What’s the significance of the US beefing up its military presence in Europe? The Conversation provides a roundup of articles addressing the crisis in Ukraine.Matt Williams, Senior International EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1473972020-10-08T12:32:51Z2020-10-08T12:32:51ZCelebrating Sister Ardeth Platte, anti-nuclear activist and ‘peacemaker in a hostile world’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/362029/original/file-20201006-18-3weaxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C1991%2C1494&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sister Ardeth Platte, wearing black to honor the international Women in Black movement, being hugged by a supporter ahead of being sentenced in 2003.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Anti-WarNuns/cb8dc0972e5d4bc1b085616715ce0e95/photo?Query=Ardeth%20AND%20platte&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2&currentItemNo=1">AP Photo/David Zalubowski</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>To <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/ardeth-platte-dominican-nun-and-antinuclear-activist-dies-at-84/2020/09/30/a8c5b702-0360-11eb-a2db-417cddf4816a_story.html">Sister Ardeth Platte</a>, who died on Sept. 30 at 84, antinuclear activism was a form of public worship.</p>
<p>Explaining <a href="http://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/platte_openstm.htm">to a federal judge in 2002</a> how she – alongside protest companions <a href="https://www.grdominicans.org/sisters/sister-carol-gilbert/">Sister Carol Gilbert</a> and <a href="https://www.grdominicans.org/sister-inspiration-jackie-hudson/">Sister Jackie Hudson</a> – entered a Colorado nuclear base, tapped on a silo with a hammer and used their own blood to smear a cross on a 100-ton missile lid, Platte said: “Every movement of our body was a liturgy.”</p>
<p>It didn’t stop the court from sending her to prison for <a href="https://www.mlive.com/entertainment/saginaw/2008/06/conviction_documentary_brings.html">obstructing national defense and damaging government property</a>. But Platte wasn’t traumatized by her 41-month sentence or any other she had served. By 2017 she and Gilbert estimated they had spent more than 15 years total behind bars and been arrested about 40 times, by their own tally.</p>
<p>“I was in long enough to see so many deaths, suicides. One woman guard went home from work, put a gun to her head and killed herself. Another man committed suicide by hanging right on the prison grounds,” Platte said in our unpublished 2017 interview. I came to know Platte and Gilbert while living with Sacred Heart sisters they knew at <a href="https://rscj.org/welcoming-communities">Anne Montgomery House in Washington, D.C</a>.</p>
<p>At the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, Platte used her sentence for ministry by being a chaplain for all faiths, advocating against the unfair sentencing of mostly poor women of color, and helping prisoners study. Her friendship with fellow inmate Piper Kerman inspired the character of <a href="https://orange-is-the-new-black.fandom.com/wiki/Jane_Ingalls">Sister Jane Ingalls</a> in Kerman’s book <a href="https://www.globalsistersreport.org/column/ministry/nun-and-actress-behind-orange-new-black-26711">“Orange is the New Black</a>,” later turned into a Netflix series. </p>
<p>Platte felt she had more in common with actor Beth Fowler, who plays Sister Ingalls in the series – and who once hoped to become a Dominican – than with the fictional character. “They put words in my mouth I would never say… I mean, even in the book where Piper says I tied myself to a flagpole. False! I went into a missile silo,” she smilingly told me in 2017, although she did recommend reading the book, which she found accurate about prison life.</p>
<h2>Near-death transformation</h2>
<p>A Michigan native with the broad accent to prove it, Ardeth Platte was born on Good Friday, April 10, 1936. Her mother left before she turned two and her father placed Platte and her brother with relatives while in the Navy in World War II.</p>
<p>She almost died at 12 of an intestinal infection, and under an oxygen tent pledged her life to God if she made it through. A high school valedictorian and star basketball player, she entered the religious order <a href="https://www.grdominicans.org/">Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids</a> in 1954 after freshman year at Aquinas College, a Grand Rapids Catholic liberal arts school.</p>
<p>Drawn to helping impoverished residents in her adopted hometown of Saginaw, Michigan, she administered Upward Bound, a federally funded low-income college preparation program, one summer, and later became principal of St. Joseph’s High School. She walked with the poorest at Civil Rights marches and <a href="https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2020/10/sister-ardeth-platte-resisted-war-through-prayer-action-for-four-decades/">protested Vietnam</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=193%2C132%2C3205%2C2613&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361715/original/file-20201005-20-1e7fo70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sister Ardeth Platte’s memorial at the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Art Laffin/Dorothy Day Catholic Worker</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Platte ran for Saginaw City Council at the urging of many disadvantaged residents. Her term from 1973-1985 included time as interim mayor. This allowed her to see firsthand how power structures enforced rather than alleviated poverty.</p>
<p>“It’s all based on death-dealing, not life-giving. I could see everything taking food from the mouths of the poorest… When I do an action regarding nuclear weapons, it relates to poverty, to contamination, to climate disaster, to all of it,” she said in 2017.</p>
<p>She was inducted into the <a href="https://miwf.org/timeline/ardeth-platte/">Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1999</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Swords into plowshares’</h2>
<p>Platte’s anti-nuclear activism started in 1983. From 1990 to 1995 she and Gilbert moved next to Strategic Air Command bases at Oscoda and then K. I. Sawyer, holding mock war crimes tribunals. Their “Faith and Resistance” retreats shared ways to conduct successful nonviolent actions.</p>
<p>Although they encountered accusations of being anti-military, the sisters ministered to military people. “[Members of the military] cried and shared stories in our living space after the first Gulf War. We even inherited a dog from one going to South Korea,” said Gilbert. “Our love has grown for military personnel,” said Platte. “We do have a draft, it’s called an economic draft. They join because they need jobs.”</p>
<p>Michigan’s bases were decommissioned after the Cold War, and the sisters moved to Baltimore’s <a href="http://www.jonahhouse.org/">Jonah House</a> in 1995. Named after the Old Testament biblical prophet who served time in the belly of a whale (aka the U.S. prison system), Jonah House teaches civil resistance, modeling how to conduct die-ins at the Pentagon, or what to do when arrested.</p>
<p>Some members of Jonah House also participated in <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/10/17/plowshares-activists-are-trial-anti-nuclear-protest-theologians-say">Plowshares</a>, a direct-action antinuclear movement named after the biblical passage in which prophets Isaiah and Micah state, “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”</p>
<p>Platte and Gilbert joined ICAN, the <a href="https://www.icanw.org/">International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons</a>, which won the <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/ican/facts/">Nobel Peace Prize in 2017</a>. Platte’s final life’s work encouraged nuclear weapons states such as the U.S. – on course to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-arsenal/u-s-nuclear-arsenal-to-cost-1-2-trillion-over-next-30-years-cbo-idUSKBN1D030E">spend US$1.2 trillion over the next three decades</a> – to sign the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Peacemaker in a hostile world’</h2>
<p>After 23 years at Jonah House, Platte and Gilbert moved to the <a href="https://www.catholicworker.org/communities/houses/dc-washington-dd-cw.html">Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House</a> in Washington. This “community of hospitality and resistance” also teaches direct action. There <a href="https://www.grdominicans.org/sister-inspiration-resist-hunger-resist-illness-resist-hate-sow-care-and-community">Platte gardened daily</a>, sharing vegetables with neighbors while preaching peace.</p>
<p>They attended actor <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/09/08/jane-fonda-fire-drill-fridays-book">Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Fridays</a> – ecological protests in Washington, D.C. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JaneFonda/posts/10158275703879160">Fonda cited Platte</a> as “a staunch and fearless friend.” They also remained in touch with Martha Stewart, whom Gilbert befriended at Alderson Federal Prison Camp.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>On Sept. 29, Platte went to bed to listen to the news. Her headphones were still on when Gilbert tried to wake her the following morning to celebrate that <a href="https://www.icanw.org/malaysia_ratification#:%7E:text=Malaysia%20has%20become%20the%2046th,Lumpur%2C%20on%2030%20September%202020.">Malaysia had ratified</a> the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Platte had slipped away in her sleep.</p>
<p>Sister Ardeth Platte consistently lived the <a href="https://greensboro.com/news/nuns-proudly-recount-protest-against-missiles/article_769582e5-4be3-5deb-a07c-e54f2a845b65.html">prayer all three activist sisters spoke</a> in 2002 when surrounded by military police in Humvees at the Peterson Air Force Base, weapons aimed: “Oh God, help us to be peacemakers in a hostile world.”</p>
<p><em>This article is based on a 2017 interview with Sister Ardeth Platte OP and Sister Carol Gilbert OP, and recent conversations with Sister Gilbert.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147397/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carole Sargent does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The lifelong activist and Dominican sister was arrested over 40 times, often with Sister Carol Gilbert, for peaceful actions protesting nuclear weapons.Carole Sargent, Faculty Director, Office of Scholarly Publications, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1193172019-06-25T12:18:37Z2019-06-25T12:18:37ZAl-Bashir and the ICC: is it worth getting your man, if you jeopardise your mission?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/281104/original/file-20190625-81766-3jutek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The International Criminal Court has renewed calls for the arrest of former Sudan leader Omar al-Bashir. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been trying without success to take custody of Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir for more than a decade. In April, al-Bashir was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-politics/sudans-bashir-ousted-by-military-protesters-demand-civilian-government-idUSKCN1RN0AY">removed from power</a>, and in June he appeared before a Sudanese court on <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN1TI1AR-OZATP">corruption charges</a>. </p>
<p>Following al-Bashir’s fall, the ICC has reinvigorated its call for his extradition. This is fraught with danger, however, because it requires that the ICC cooperate with the men who have taken charge in Sudan, who are themselves deeply implicated in the very acts that al-Bashir is accused of. Such cooperation risks damaging the ICC’s reputation and legitimising a criminal regime.</p>
<p>Ten years ago the ICC <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/darfur/albashir">indicted Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir</a>, together with four others, for the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/09/09/men-no-mercy/rapid-support-forces-attacks-against-civilians-darfur-sudan">genocide in Darfur</a>. But neither Sudan – nor any other state – would turn him over. In 2014, the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/icc-suspends-darfur-crime-investigations-over-lack-of-action/a-18126467">ICC suspended its investigations in Darfur</a> because neither Sudan nor the UN Security Council were co-operating. It was the Security Council that had <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2005/sc8351.doc.htm">referred</a> the situation in Darfur to the court in 2005. </p>
<p>Even though the ICC has stopped its investigations in Darfur, the case against al-Bashir continued to trigger several political imbroglios for the court. Pressure on South Africa to arrest the visiting al-Bashir in 2015 led to the country’s <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/12/south-africa-threatens-to-withdraw-from-icc-alleging-anti-african-bias.html">near exit from the Court</a>. The ICC ultimately determined <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1320">not to punish South Africa’s non-cooperation</a>. </p>
<p>Earlier this year the ICC Appeals Chamber issued its latest decision on questions involving noncooperation regarding al-Bashir, this time against <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=pr1452">against Jordan</a>. Again the court articulated its right to try state sovereigns while determining not to sanction the uncooperative member state. </p>
<p>Thus before al-Bashir’s fall from power, his indictment had developed into a lose-lose situation for the Court and its proponents. On the one hand, the situation that prompted the indictment – the genocide in Darfur – was <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/06/sudan-fresh-evidence-of-government-sponsored-crimes-in-darfur-shows-drawdown-of-peacekeepers-premature-and-reckless/">ongoing and unaddressed</a> by the court. On the other hand, any action the ICC could take against al-Bashir was politically costly, continuing to weaken an <a href="http://opiniojuris.org/wp-content/uploads/Lincolns-22-May_ForKevinJonHeller-2.pdf">institution already under threat</a>.</p>
<h2>From the frying pan into the fire</h2>
<p>Late last year protesters began assembling in cities across Sudan, calling for al-Bashir’s resignation. Some were <a href="https://www.voanews.com/extremism-watch/sudans-crackdown-protest-stirs-concern">killed, others beaten and arrested</a>. Nevertheless the Sudanese authorities also showed restraint, and stories of soldiers protecting protesters against security forces <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-africa-47860804/sudan-protest-some-soldiers-protect-demonstrators">made international headlines</a>. </p>
<p>In April, amid much celebration, al-Bashir was removed from power by a military council.</p>
<p>But the euphoria was short lived. In the two months since his removal, demonstrations have intensified, <a href="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN1T10SJ-OZATP">seeking to pressure the military council</a> which deposed him to relinquish power. This interim government is nominally led by Lt General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, an unknown figure with experience fighting in Yemen and with <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190603-sudans-burhan-relative-unknown-regional-player">ties to the Rapid Support Force</a>, the paramilitary group responsible for ongoing atrocities in Darfur. But, real power is said to lie with his second in command, <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/africa/Sudan-s-Burhan-rises-from-obscurity-to-strongman/4552902-5144628-euasplz/index.html">Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo (known as Hemeti</a> whose forces now control Khartoum. </p>
<p>On June 3 Hemeti’s fighters <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/africa/sudan-leader-hemeti.html?module=inline">killed</a> more than 100 protesters and raped and sexually abused dozens of people. As Alaa Salah, the woman pictured in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/fashion/demonstration-clothing-women-sudan.html?module=inline">iconic, April 2019 photo</a> of peaceable Sudanese protests, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/world/africa/sudan-leader-hemeti.html?module=inline">told</a> The New York Times,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For years Hemeti killed and burned in Darfur. Now Darfur has come to Khartoum.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hemeti has contested the numbers but not the aim of the violence, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48535165">saying</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will not allow chaos and we will not go back on our convictions. There is no way back. We must impose the respect of the country by law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Sudan, for now, that seems to be the law of the armed and not the rule of law. </p>
<h2>The question of prosecution</h2>
<p>In May, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-bashir-court/sudans-bashir-charged-with-corruption-in-first-appearance-since-april-idUSKCN1TH0IP">prosecutors in Sudan announced</a> that al-Bashir would be tried for corruption, financing terror, and for protest deaths. This answered concerns that a comfortable retirement was being planned for him. </p>
<p>But, conspicuously absent from the listed crimes are atrocities committed in Darfur and elsewhere – in other words the charges the ICC has laid against al-Bashir and four others. This means that local prosecutions will not address the international criminal law violations al-Bashir is accused of. </p>
<p>Against this backdrop, the ICC has now renewed calls for <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=190619-stat-otp-UNSC-Darfur-Sudan">al-Bashir’s arrest</a>. Speaking to the UN Security Council on 19 June 2019, the ICC prosecutor urged:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/item.aspx?name=190619-stat-otp-UNSC-Darfur-Sudan">now is the time to act</a>. Now is the time for the people of Sudan to choose law over impunity and ensure that the ICC suspects in the Darfur situation finally face justice in a court of law. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Her request is the immediate handover of al-Bashir and the four associates named in the 2009 arrest warrant.</p>
<p>But what would ICC prosecution of al-Bashir and his four associates mean, at this point? </p>
<p>In the present situation, the prosecutor’s articulation of “fighting impunity” rings hollow. This is because cooperation with the Sudanese government to try al-Bashir would mean cooperating with – even possibly legitimising – those who themselves have been implicated in genocide. This is a problem the <a href="https://theconversation.com/al-bashir-why-the-icc-is-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-115388">ICC has faced, and failed,</a> before. </p>
<p>Moreover, focusing resources on obtaining a post-power al-Bashir in the midst of ongoing atrocities by the governing authorities may strengthen a developing <a href="https://justiceinconflict.org/2015/03/19/why-the-icc-wont-prosecute-museveni/">critique</a> that the ICC is not objective and neutral, but rather political, pursuing foremost those who are not strong. The ICC’s recent determination not to move forward with investigations of US conduct in <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a> has bolstered this view.</p>
<p>The ICC asserts that it is <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/morejustworld?fbclid=IwAR0ENGc_erY0ZYewsEmT%20%20%20-wfRp-ZR1AFVsL1ZD4oDRNAFxWsVo7gqKiaNXMs">“building a more just world”</a>. But action that legitimises or strengthens authoritarian rule or criminal regimes does not serve that aim. </p>
<p>At this juncture, the ICC needs to ask itself a cost-benefit question: would the benefit of trying a defunct dictator who is already facing a future in jail override the detriment of legitimising a genocidal ruling authority? Is it worth getting your man, if you jeopardise your mission?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerstin Carlson receives funding from the Dreyer's Fund regarding her research on international criminal justice in Africa. </span></em></p>Cooperation with the Sudanese government to try al-Bashir could amount to legitimising those who themselves have been implicated in genocideKerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1054812018-10-29T00:52:23Z2018-10-29T00:52:23ZBolsonaro wins Brazil election, promises to purge leftists from country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242634/original/file-20181028-7056-1yv865l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bolsonaro supporters celebrate outside his home in Rio de Janeiro after exit polls on Oct. 28 declared him the preliminary winner of Brazil's 2018 presidential election.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Brazil-Elections/8c0877c5b3174268a3bc7f834be5a083/2/0">AP Photo/Leo Correa</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the most <a href="https://theconversation.com/mapping-brazils-political-polarization-online-96434">polarized</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/brazil-election-all-you-need-to-know-ahead-of-the-vote.html">divisive campaign</a> in its modern history, Brazil has <a href="https://g1.globo.com/politica/eleicoes/2018/noticia/2018/10/28/jair-bolsonaro-e-eleito-presidente-e-interrompe-serie-de-vitorias-do-pt.ghtml">elected as its next president</a> a right-wing politician who openly disdains human rights and admires military dictators.</p>
<p>Jair Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old congressman who had <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazilian-evangelicals-swinging-hard-to-the-right-could-put-a-trump-like-populist-in-the-presidency-96845">strong evangelical backing</a> for his law-and-order stance on policing, support for gun rights and opposition to abortion, won 55 percent of votes. Bolsonaro’s leftist competitor, Fernando Haddad, a former education minister and ex-mayor of São Paulo, received 45 percent of the roughly 100 million ballots cast. </p>
<p>Bolsonaro’s angry, populist campaign rhetoric led many newspapers and public figures worldwide to declare his candidacy a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/25/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-democracy-rights">threat to democracy</a>. But 57.8 million Brazilians on Sunday showed less concern about Bolsonaro’s message.</p>
<p>Haddad, his opponent, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20180911-brazil-workers-party-selects-fernando-haddad-presidential-candidate-drops-lula">joined Brazil’s presidential race</a> less than a month before the <a href="https://theconversation.com/disillusioned-brazilians-choose-bolsonaro-haddad-after-a-tense-and-violent-campaign-104224">first round of voting</a>. The Workers Party, which has run Brazil since 2002, tapped Haddad to replace front-runner Inacio Lula de Silva, a wildly popular former president <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazil-in-political-crisis-over-jailed-president-4-essential-reads-91143">jailed on corruption charges in July</a>. Haddad was unable to retain Lula’s lead. </p>
<h2>Brazil’s politics of disillusionment</h2>
<p>Bolsonaro’s victory will likely worsen an already acute crisis in Brazil, the second-most populous nation in the Western Hemisphere.</p>
<p>Once a <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazils-economy-why-i-was-wrong-to-be-an-optimist-101685">rising star in the developing world</a>, Brazil has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/facing-unemployment-austerity-and-scandal-brazil-struggles-to-keep-it-together-71663">mired in severe recession</a> and political turmoil since 2015. Hundreds of politicians, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazil-in-political-crisis-over-jailed-president-4-essential-reads-91143">former President Lula</a>, have been arrested and jailed in a judicial investigation that has exposed corruption at the highest levels of government.</p>
<p>That corruption has consequences: A survey conducted in August by the <a href="http://www.ibopeinteligencia.com/noticias-e-pesquisas/confianca-do-brasileiro-nas-instituicoes-e-a-mais-baixa-desde-2009/">Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics</a> showed that only 25 percent of citizens trusted their federal government and 18 percent trusted Congress. </p>
<p>In such circumstances, Bolsonaro’s win as an anti-establishment candidate was predictable – and not just because Bolsonaro had maintained a clear lead in the polls ever since Lula withdrew in September. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242635/original/file-20181028-7068-mxzwnx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brazil’s next president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Brazil-Elections/efee31dae3e24db782c3da83aef19893/4/0">AP Photo/Silvia izquierdo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When voters don’t believe in their politicians or government institutions, candidates who tap into voter disdain for the political system can find success. In my scholarly research on democratization, <a href="http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=3034146">this is what I call</a> the “politics of disillusionment.”</p>
<p>This phenomenon helped conservative outsiders to win in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-wins-us-election-scholars-from-around-the-world-react-68282">United States</a>, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/its-the-right-wings-italy-now/562256/">Italy</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/09/viktor-orban-re-election-hungarys-anti-immigrant-leader-major-challenge-for-eu">Hungary</a>.</p>
<p>Now, disillusionment in Brazil has handed victory to a right-wing populist who promises to purge the country of his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/22/brazils-jair-bolsonaro-says-he-would-put-army-on-streets-to-fight">leftist opponents</a>.</p>
<p>“Either they go overseas, or they go to jail,” he told a huge crowd in São Paulo in one of his last appearances before Sunday’s vote. </p>
<h2>Inflammatory rhetoric and militarism</h2>
<p>Bolsonaro has been in Congress for three decades. But to harness popular rage against the system, his campaign offered an outsider’s scathing critique of Brazilian society.</p>
<p>In response to rampant political corruption and extreme violence in Brazil, Bolsonaro defended <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d7df60cc-b7c4-11e8-bbc3-ccd7de085ffe">military dictatorships</a> like the one that ran Brazil from 1964 to 1985. The only problem with Brazil’s former authoritarian leaders, Bolsonaro said, was that they “<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/bolsonaro-harnesses-disillusion-with-brazil-s-traditional-politics-1.3634572">tortured rather than killed</a>” dissenters. </p>
<p>Critics say his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/world/americas/brazils-election-military.html">adulation of the military</a> raises serious doubts about the future of Brazil’s 33-year-old democracy.</p>
<p>Bolsonaro, a former army captain, regularly uses <a href="http://time.com/5375731/jair-bolsonaro/">homophobic, misogynistic and racist rhetoric</a> against large swaths of Brazil’s population. He has said that he would “never allow” his children to get <a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/wtf/is-this-the-worlds-most-repulsive-politician/news-story/926a4a59cf6132f770dfdbd46f610e97">romantically involved with a black person</a> and that he was “incapable of loving a homosexual son.” </p>
<p>Bolsonaro also once told a fellow congressional representative that she “did not deserve to be raped” by him because she was “terrible and ugly.”</p>
<p>His candidacy was met by outrage and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/30/huge-protests-in-brazil-as-far-right-presidential-hopeful-jair-bolsonaro-returns-home">mass protest by women</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/239526/original/file-20181005-72100-1yjeras.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hundreds of thousands of women across Brazil marched against Bolsonaro, who is known for his disparaging remarks about women, on Sept. 29.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Brazil-Elections-Bolsonaro/8f6c1736aacb43c4b251a2a6827d7cba/32/0">AP Photo/Andre Penner</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The president-elect’s ambiguous policy agenda</h2>
<p>Beyond his inflammatory rhetoric, Bolsonaro has offered <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/blog/are-brazilians-ready-bet-bolsonaro">few specifics</a> about how he would govern Brazil.</p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-election/brazil-right-winger-to-skip-debates-cannot-campaign-aide-idUSKCN1MQ12N">skipped presidential debates</a> and <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/brazil-election/brazil-presidential-candidate-bolsonaro-avoids-tv-debate-question-idUKE6N1U603T">avoided tough questions</a> about whether he would make economic and political reforms to help get Brazil out of its three-year-long crisis.</p>
<p>To tackle record-high crime, the president-elect has said he will ease gun laws and reduce the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16. He is a staunch proponent of <a href="https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/opinion-editorial/opinion-brazils-informal-death-penalty/">restarting the death penalty</a> in Brazil, saying he would “volunteer to kill <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW_3PW5QxJ8">those on death row</a>” himself.</p>
<p>Brazil has the world’s third-largest prison population. <a href="https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/rio-politics/brazil-has-worlds-third-largest-prison-population/">Sixty-four percent of those incarcerated are black</a>. </p>
<p>Bolsonaro also wants to end <a href="https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/eleicoes-2018/por-que-nao-estudam-diz-bolsonaro-sobre-cotas-para-negros">affirmative action at Brazilian public universities</a>.</p>
<p>He considers abortion to be <a href="https://www.pragmatismopolitico.com.br/2018/08/bolsonaro-contra-o-aborto.html">murder</a>. The procedure is banned in Brazil, but in recent years women’s groups have been pushing to liberalize abortion laws. That is unlikely to happen under Bolsonaro. </p>
<p>Some analysts have <a href="https://www.fairobserver.com/region/latin_america/jair-bolsonaro-brazil-election-economy-populist-politics-latin-america-news-51621/">suggested</a> that Congress may rein in Bolsonaro’s more radical tendencies. But evidence from the United States and elsewhere suggests that in the politics of disillusion, presidents who campaign as extremist govern as extremists. </p>
<p>Bolsonaro takes office on Jan. 1. Brazil’s political institutions, already weakened by corruption and public outrage, will face great pressure to show that they can withstand the new president’s populist ambitions and militaristic instincts. </p>
<p>It is a daunting challenge for Brazil’s young and, I fear, faltering democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helder do Vale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressman and former army captain, is Brazil’s next president, with 56 percent of votes. Critics see a threat to democracy in his scathing attacks on Brazilian society.Helder do Vale, Associate Professor, Graduate School of International and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign StudiesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/872892017-12-22T13:23:18Z2017-12-22T13:23:18ZImperial Japan saw itself as a ‘warrior nation’ – and the idea lingers today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200405/original/file-20171221-15874-o00rp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Japanese soldiers of the Sino-Japanese War.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_soldiers_of_the_Sino_Japanese_War_1895.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a warning to China on the eve of his first trip to Asia in November 2017, the US president, Donald Trump, called Japan a “<a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/11/04/national/politics-diplomacy/trump-warns-china-face-big-problem-warrior-nation-japan-north-korea/#.WgnZKojLdPY">warrior nation</a>” that needed to be taken seriously. Trump’s comments are just one example of the widespread view that Japan is a martial country with spiritual roots in the samurai warriors of old. But is it?</p>
<p>Samurai remain among the most recognisable aspects of Japanese culture and often feature in film, television, literature, and art. The events of World War II complicate this image, as the supposed samurai heritage was used by all sides to explain imperial Japan’s behaviour. The legacy of that conflict continues to affect Japan’s international relations, and controversies over history are major obstacles to reconciliation with China. </p>
<p>Portrayals of Japan as a martial country typically focus on the samurai heritage, especially the concept of <em>bushido</em> – “the way of the warrior”. <em>Bushido</em> is popularly seen as an ancient martial ethic that guided first the samurai and later the soldiers of Japan’s modern wars. This view overlooks important aspects of Japan’s history. </p>
<p>Although the samurai who ruled Japan were ostensibly a “warrior class”, they did not experience major domestic or foreign conflict for more than 200 years before the 1860s. Furthermore, there was no widely-accepted samurai ethic in pre-modern Japan – and the word <em>bushido</em> was largely unknown until the 20th century.</p>
<h2>Rising power</h2>
<p>Many new nation-states emerged during the 19th century, among them all three of World War II’s <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-pact-of-steel-is-signed-the-axis-is-formed">Axis powers</a>: Germany, Italy and Japan. After the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Meiji-Restoration">Meiji Revolution</a> that put the country back under imperial rule in 1868, the new government needed to convince the Japanese people to identify with their new nation-state. As in Germany and Italy, many people in Japan were searching for a national identity, and in search of an example, many Japanese thinkers looked to Britain, then ruler of the world’s most powerful empire.</p>
<p>The Britain they observed was experiencing a “medievalist” revival. <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/197">Knighthood and chivalry</a> were popular cultural themes and many public and private buildings imitated the appearance of medieval castles. These trends inspired some Japanese thinkers around 1890 to search for equivalents in their own traditions. They compared samurai with European knights and proposed <em>bushido</em> as a Japanese counterpart to chivalry and gentlemanliness. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/200409/original/file-20171221-15870-1jmspte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Samurai with sword, c. 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASamurai_with_sword.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Japan’s victory over China in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sino-Japanese-War-1894-1895">Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895</a> gave <em>bushido</em> a great boost, but also changed it. Before the war, <em>bushido</em> was invoked as a potential equivalent to Western ideals – after the war, the mood in Japan became more nationalistic and militaristic, and <em>bushido</em> came to reflect these sentiments. </p>
<p>The term now implied self-sacrifice, patriotism, and loyalty to the emperor; its promoters now <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2014/11/samurai-bushido-british-culture/">dismissed European chivalry</a> as “mere woman-worship” and inferior to “manly” samurai ideals. This new “imperial <em>bushido</em>” rapidly became an important part of the state ideology, and was widely used in civilian and military education in Japan until 1945.</p>
<p>The <em>bushido</em> boom that took place after 1895 also coincided with a dramatic shift in Sino-Japanese relations. In the years after the war, thousands of Chinese travelled to Japan for study, business, or political exile, and those who arrived in the early 1900s – especially after Japan’s victory in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Russo-Japanese-War">Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905</a> – encountered a Japan fascinated with <em>bushido</em>. Chinese students studied the “way of the warrior” in Japanese schools and military academies – like their Japanese classmates, they were taught that <em>bushido</em> was the key to Japan’s modernisation and military successes. </p>
<p>They had little reason to question these teachings, as the evidence was seemingly all around. Instead, influential Chinese reformers such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Liang-Qichao">Liang Qichao</a> searched for their own <em>bushido</em> tradition that could help strengthen China. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chiang-Kai-shek">Chiang Kai-shek</a> (Jiang Jieshi), who later go on to become president of the Republic of China, was a cadet at a Japanese military academy at the time. Chiang was deeply impressed by <em>bushido</em> and sought to instil a similar martial spirit in China after his return.</p>
<h2>Loose ends</h2>
<p>The imperial <em>bushido</em> ideology was used to indoctrinate the Japanese servicemen who invaded China in the 1930s and attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. It was not surprising, therefore, that outsiders saw Japan’s wartime activity in the context of <em>bushido</em> and the samurai heritage. </p>
<p>After World War II, <em>bushido</em> was comprehensively rejected as a dangerous ideology. By the 1970s, however, <em>bushido</em> was revived as a cultural explanation for Japan’s recovery and rapid economic growth. This new <em>bushido</em> generally stresses loyalty, virtue, honesty and self-sacrifice, while rejecting overtly militaristic elements. </p>
<p>Decades later, today’s mainstream <em>bushido</em> closely resembles the early theories inspired by idealised European chivalry. A vocal minority on the right is attempting to revive <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japans-right-wing-resurgence">more extreme wartime ideals</a>, taking <a href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-should-be-appalled-by-japans-historical-revisionism-12381">historical revisionism</a> to sometimes radical extremes – but for now at least, these nationalists remain a <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/6/1/15727090/borders-japan-right-wing-nationalism">political minority</a>. In China, meanwhile, Japanese <em>bushido</em> is understood in a way much closer to its wartime imperial meaning – in part a reflection of just how unresolved the history of World War II still is in East Asia.</p>
<p>The events of the 20th century are a heavy burden on Sino-Japanese relations to this day. Dealing with these issues is further complicated by some of the lingering ideas of national identity, and <em>bushido</em> in particular, which create distance and undermine trust on both sides.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oleg Benesch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Japanese imperialism rose and fell, its leaders interpreted and re-interpreted a single distinctive concept: “bushido”.Oleg Benesch, Senior Lecturer in East Asian History, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/874062017-12-13T13:15:11Z2017-12-13T13:15:11ZSyrian nationalism is all about masculinity<p>To truly “belong” to Syria, you have to be masculine – especially in a time of war. And throughout the country’s catastrophic six-year conflict, the same macho message has been driven home repeatedly.</p>
<p>The current Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, laid it out boldly in a landmark <a href="http://bit.ly/2zRLRz1">speech</a> on July 26 2015, in which he emphasised the relationship between sacrificial heroism, militarism, national membership and belonging. As he put it: “The fatherland is not for those who live in it or hold its nationality, but for those who defend and protect it,” pointing out that “the army, in order to be able to perform its duties and counter terrorism, must be supported by the human element.” </p>
<p>The major themes that coursed through the speech still hold sway. Syria is a “fatherland” for which Syrian men should be ready to die; their self-sacrifice requires martial ability and physical strength, both of which are tests of national loyalty. And at the centre of it all is the army, whose accomplishments Syrians are required to appreciate. In other words, the ideal Syrian is a martial man. </p>
<p>And just as these ideas are at the forefront of the Syrian conflict, they will be very familiar to any ordinary Syrian. Assad’s invigorated nationalism is a highly amplified and intensified version of the same nationalist ideology that we have all experienced over the last four decades.</p>
<h2>Boys’ club</h2>
<p>As a Syrian, I encountered nationalism all the way through my primary and secondary school education. The male pupils were conscripted to two organisations affiliated with the Assads’ <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18582755">Ba'ath Party</a>: in primary school, the Syrian National Organisation for Childhood <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdV7f1fX0hY">(tala'e'e)</a>, and in high school, the Revolutionary Youth Union <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHZUOhKDShA">(al-shabibah)</a>. These two organisations would mobilise boys through enforced training and then membership of paramilitary groups.</p>
<p>In the classroom, we sat through a lesson every week about how to become an <a href="https://www.alaraby.co.uk/miscellaneous/2014/9/21/%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%85-%D8%AB%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B9%D8%AB-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%87%D9%82%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AE%D9%84-%D8%B5%D9%86%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%82">active Ba'athist</a> by using a Kalashnikov rifle, and how to show our love for both the nation and the leader, particularly through celebrating a physically strong body. </p>
<p>A compulsory 15-day summer camp gave male students extra time to learn about the soldierly life, in an attempt to prepare them for compulsory army conscription when they finished high school. Meanwhile, we female students attended sessions that taught us about the glorious past of our nation – a story told entirely through the heroic deeds of men.</p>
<p>During enforced mass marches to celebrate the “great leader”, at the time, Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, we learned by heart the slogan: “With blood and soul, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Hafez.” We were taught <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpKP1KNyYas">nationalist songs</a> celebrating the heroic deeds of men and their strength and bravery, reinforcing the idea that the nation was built only by men’s accomplishments.</p>
<h2>The nation of men</h2>
<p>This cult of masculinity necessarily obscures the achievements of Syrian women, and relegates them to a supporting role. Their part in the national story is to respect and revere their protective patriarchs, with Hafez and then Bashar al-Assad positioned as all Syrians’ ultimate fathers, protectors and leaders. </p>
<p>And even to the extent that Syrian nationalism is demonstrated through familial love, this love can only be accomplished in masculine terms – and only by the patriotic men who serve as great soldiers of the nation.</p>
<p>This endless perpetuation of masculine nationalism happens not just in the classroom and the military training camp, but in everyday spaces too. Walking along the streets in any Syrian city, the aura of male strength and heroism is everywhere; khaki is the dominant colour, and portraits of Hafez al-Assad are on prominent display.</p>
<p>With Syria still embroiled in all-consuming conflict, the Syrian people face many scenarios that carry a particular set of nationalistic sentiments. Many hope that even if the current regime survives, it will lose its power to shape and control a national narrative of any sort. </p>
<p>But that only raises the difficult question of what the Syrian nation even is, and how Syrians can organise a sense of national love and belonging in what promises to be a close-to-unrecognisable future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87406/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rahaf Aldoughli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Lessons in military manliness and how to respect it have been a part of Syrian education for decades.Rahaf Aldoughli, Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/866872017-11-16T02:15:39Z2017-11-16T02:15:39ZWar and democracy – who decides?<p>In March 2003, the Howard government involved Australia in an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-john-prescott-says-tony-blair-led-uk-into-illegal-war-in-iraq-a7129106.html">illegal military invasion of Iraq</a>. The consequences of that war continue to be devastating for the people of Iraq and the wider Middle East. The prime minister was able to opt for invasion because in Australia the sovereign power to take the gravest decision, the commitment of the Australian Defence Force to international armed conflict, rests with the executive – in practice, often the PM alone – rather than with parliament.</p>
<p>Since 2014, further military deployments have taken place in Iraq. The bombing of Syria continues. Several months ago, the prime minister announced <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-11/australia-would-enter-conflict-with-north-korea/8796586">unqualified support</a> in principle for the United States in possible military action against North Korea.</p>
<p>All these developments reinforce the dangers typically associated with secretive small-group decision-making. Closed decision-making breeds hubris; and hubris, the friend of folly and recklessness, often results in disasters. All are a curse for democracy. That is why the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>, in partnership with <a href="http://www.warpowersreform.org.au/">Australians for War Powers Reform</a>, convened a public forum on the subject of the urgent need for war powers reform.</p>
<p>Held on the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/war-democracy-decides/">International Day of Peace</a>, September 21, <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/events/war-democracy-decides/">War and Democracy – Who Decides?</a> featured contributions from <a href="https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/humanities/paul-barratt">Paul Barratt AO</a>, president of Australians for War Powers Reform and former secretary of the Department of Defence; <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/about/commissioners/former-president-professor-gillian-triggs">Professor Gillian Triggs</a>, former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission (see her video below); and lawyer and activist <a href="http://kellietranter.com/">Kellie Tranter</a>, whose edited contribution follows.</p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>When governments kill in large numbers they always do so for a good reason. We must be on guard against that. <strong>– Howard Zinn</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193125/original/file-20171103-26472-1bujob7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=726&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lawyer and human rights activist Kellie Tranter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lindy Baker/Sydney Democracy Network</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian politicians talk about ending terrorism but they make decisions that carelessly or inadvertently stir the pot and radicalise people. This then reinforces the dominant <a href="https://theconversation.com/by-framing-secular-society-as-a-christian-creation-hansons-revival-goes-beyond-simple-racism-67707">public narrative</a> and makes military incursions superficially acceptable. Unfortunately, vigorous debate in Australia is encouraged only within the limits imposed by “<a href="https://chomsky.info/20070405/">unstated doctrinal orthodoxy</a>”, particularly in relation to foreign policy.</p>
<p>Not only are the people who control what we know determining our future, the government secrecy surrounding Australia’s historical record deliberately obfuscates our understanding of what is going on right now. Symptomatic is the way the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has recently been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">found</a> to be one of the least transparent military coalition members in Syria. The ADF won’t reveal “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">where they bomb, when they bomb or what they bomb</a>”.</p>
<p>Syria’s recent history reads like a contemporary illustration of Chris Clark’s conclusion in <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780061146657/the-sleepwalkers">Sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914</a>. The period analysed in that book shows that great powers had more than one enemy, and that executive decision-making was chaotic. </p>
<p>War was a consequence of decisions made in many places, with their effect being cumulative and interactive. These decisions were made by a gallery of actors who otherwise shared a fundamentally similar political culture.</p>
<p>On September 9 2015, Australia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Gillian Bird, <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">wrote</a> to the UN Security Council president claiming that Article 51 of the UN Charter recognises the inherent right of states to act in individual or collective self-defence when an armed attack occurs against a UN member state. States must be able to act in self-defence when the government of the state where the threat is located is unwilling or unable to prevent attacks originating from its territory. Bird alleged that the Syrian government had, by its failure to constrain attacks upon Iraqi territory originating from ISIS bases within Syria, demonstrated that it was unwilling or unable to prevent those attacks.</p>
<h2>Unauthorised and uninvited</h2>
<p>The Australian government was not questioned about how Syria was unwilling or unable to prevent those attacks. It was not asked how airstrikes would affect the Syrian population and infrastructure. </p>
<p>There was no link between ISIS, a non-state actor, and Syria. ISIS was not acting under instructions from, or the direction or control of, the Syrian government. Western governments made no attempt to work with the morally disgraceful Assad regime to actually enable it to prevent attacks emanating from its territory (and indeed Australia didn’t recognise the legitimacy of the regime).</p>
<p>Moreover, the Syrian government didn’t invite us to carry out airstrikes in Syria, and there was no UN Security Council resolution authorising the use of force. Neither the Australian government nor the opposition provided a clear explanation about why in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4292452.htm">August</a> 2015 there was no clear legal basis for Australian involvement in Syria, but by <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2015/s4309513.htm">September</a> 2015 there was. </p>
<p>There was no rational discussion about our strategic ends. There was certainly no <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">mention</a> of the fact that in 2014 we already had embedded ADF personnel in Florida contributing to operations against ISIS in Syria.</p>
<p>There was, however, a <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">letter</a>, dated September 17 2015, from the Syrian government to the Security Council. The mainstream media did not report it, but the letter was referred to in documents I received following FOI requests. The letter disputed Australia’s unwilling and unable claims and pointed out that the Syrian Arab Army had, over four years, been fighting ISIS, the <a href="https://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/listedterroristorganisations/pages/jabhatal-nusra.aspx">al-Nusrah Front</a> and other groups being supported by Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western states. </p>
<p>The letter called on others to co-ordinate with Syria. It said the international coalition led by the US had yet to achieve anything tangible in its war on terrorist organisations.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193304/original/file-20171105-1011-rr60ku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN Security Council powers failed to alleviate the suffering of civilians as the conflict in Syria intensified.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russian Ministry of Defence</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Syrian government had a point, particularly since US President Barack Obama had already told VICE News (on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOnKM2a7Nok">camera</a>) that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion in 2003, which is an example of unintended consequences.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Failing Syria</h2>
<p>What was omitted from the political and public discourse in the lead-up to Australia’s decision to become involved in Syria was the fact that Syria had experienced a severe <a href="https://theconversation.com/food-security-how-drought-and-rising-prices-led-to-conflict-in-syria-71539">drought</a> between 2007 and 2010. The drought spurred as many as 1.5 million people to migrate from the countryside into the cities, creating significant social and economic tensions. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq">2012</a> the UK’s MI6 co-operated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to Syrian rebels after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. That same year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-in-2012-to-have-syrias-assad-step-aside">Russia proposed</a> that Assad could step down as part of a peace deal. The US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator would fall that they ignored the proposal. </p>
<p>By this stage, the UN human rights commissioner had already <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2013/jan/02/syria-violence-closes-aleppo-airport-live">confirmed</a> 60,000 Syrian fatalities between March 2011 and November 2012. The current <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/03/13/the-human-toll-of-syrias-bloody-conflict-numbers-in-the-hundred_a_21884907/">estimate</a> is almost half a million deaths.</p>
<p>In September 2014 the US Congress <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/19/us-weapons-to-syria-repeats-historical-mistake">determined</a> that the US$500 million CIA program to arm Syrian rebels had failed. Arms had been ending up in the hands of the al-Nusra Front, and Jordanian intelligence officers were selling arms on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/world/middleeast/cia-arms-for-syrian-rebels-supplied-black-market-officials-say.html?mcubz=0">black market</a>. </p>
<p>The following month, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html">reported</a> that a CIA report had concluded that “many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict”. The report came a month after Australia had delivered weapons to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and a month before our successful <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/Operations/Okra/2014Stats.asp">delivery</a> of 18,000kg of crated weapons from Albania to Erbil in Iraq.</p>
<p>On March 21 2015, international aid agencies and human rights groups released the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/failing-syria-report-says-aid-has-not-improved-for/6307778">Failing Syria</a> report. This found that UN Security Council powers had failed to alleviate the suffering of civilians as the conflict intensified. </p>
<p>Two months later, the International Crisis Group released its own <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/islamic-state-kurdish-militias-icg-report/27018967.html">report</a> warning that military aid had been given without an underlying strategy, which would prolong the battle with ISIS and inflame other local conflicts between intra-Kurdish rivals. The report noted that the US-led coalition had remained silent about Kurdish land grabs in disputed territories.</p>
<p>In May this year, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/us-military-admits-failures-to-monitor-over-1-billion-worth-of-arms-transfers/">urged</a> the US and other countries to stop arms transfers that could fuel atrocities. This followed confirmation by a US Defence Department audit that the army had failed to monitor over US$1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment transfers to Kuwait and Iraq, which have ended up in the hands of ISIS.</p>
<h2>A show for the domestic audience</h2>
<p>In August 2015 <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-pushed-for-us-request-to-join-syrian-air-strikes-20150825-gj7kfh.html">rumours</a> began to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-in-talks-to-expand-bombing-raids-against-islamic-state-into-syria-20150813-giy3fb.html">circulate</a> that the then prime minister, Tony Abbott, had pushed for the US request to join airstrikes in Syria. Only five days before the bipartisan decision was made, Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/syrias-refugee-crisis-in-numbers/">reported</a> that 220,000 people had been killed in Syria. Another 12.8 million needed humanitarian assistance and 50% of the population was displaced.</p>
<p>Still, at a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/taxpayers-have-spent-15-billion-to-fund-overseas-military-missions-since-1999/news-story/45c74b73f3d0da74abb70f3050e6430f">reported</a> cost of A$500 million a year for our air war against ISIS, and regardless of international law, we were first in with the US, beating our British counterparts who <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/02/cameron-drops-plans-commons-vote-airstrikes-isis-syria">delayed</a> plans for a parliamentary vote. A number of military strategists were of the view that Australia’s involvement was a show for the domestic audience.</p>
<p>The irony, of course, is that six days after the decision to conduct airstrikes in Syria, we had a new prime minister. Shortly after that a document titled “ADF Operations in the Middle East” was produced in response to my FOI <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/exclusive-foi-documents-expose-australias-unlawful-invasion-of-syria,9831">request</a>. It confirmed that “the prospects for a political or military solution are poor”.</p>
<p>The word “poor” seems highly inadequate. In order to supply arms to Syrian rebels, the <a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/makingakilling/the-pentagon-is-spending-2-billion-on-soviet-style-arms-for-syrian-rebels">Pentagon</a> relies on an army of contractors from military giants to firms linked to organised crime. Saudi Arabia (a Western ally) and Qatar are <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/">providing</a> clandestine financial and logistical support to ISIS, while Iran and Russia support Assad. Turkey is fighting the Kurds and the US-supported opposition groups, but is fighting with Russia against ISIS.</p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-raqqah-drones-20170808-story.html">drone</a> strikes and bombs being dropped by the US, Belgium, Jordan, Netherlands, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, France, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Israel, Denmark and Australia. There is disturbing evidence of the al-Nusra Front’s <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/17/how-the-islamic-state-seized-a-chemical-weapons-stockpile/">access</a> to sarin gas. And to top it off, a Bulgarian journalist recently <a href="https://trud.bg/350-diplomatic-flights-carry-weapons-for-terrorists/">uncovered</a> Azerbaijan Silk Way Airlines offering diplomatic flights to private companies and arms manufacturers from the US, Balkans and Israel and the militaries of Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and US Special Operations Command to ship weapons around the world, including to Syria, without regulation.</p>
<h2>Hidden agendas lead to humanitarian disaster</h2>
<p>Our politicians continue to support the US, an ally that has historically forsaken the exploration of peaceful means and diplomatic solutions in favour of force and aggression. Under the pretext of responding “with decency and with force” to humanitarian concerns and the responsibility to protect civilians, Australia extended airstrikes into Syria.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qHVlX8gnEWU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Confirming he is considering airstrikes in Syria, Tony Abbott tells parliament Australia will respond ‘with decency and with force’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Decency? Every war is a war on children when armed conflicts kill and maim more <a href="https://www.unicef.org/graca/summry.htm">children</a> than soldiers. Perversely, more soldiers die from <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/11/30/more-australian-soldiers-lost-suicide-fighting-afghanistan-war">suicide</a> and peacetime incidents than war. </p>
<p>And then there’s the matter of secrecy. On January 6 2017, I issued an FOI request to the Defence Department for copies of documents confirming or specifying the dates, locations and outcomes (numbers of military and civilian casualties) of airstrikes by Australian forces in Syria. On January 20 2017, I <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-14/adf-tracking-civilian-deaths-in-syria-iraq-is-airstrikes/8354064">received</a> an email simply confirming that “the Department does not specifically collect authoritative (and therefore accurate) data on enemy and/or civilian casualties in either Iraq or Syria and certainly does not track such statistics”.</p>
<p>For all the political protestations about concern for civilian lives, we are not even trying to count our victims. To date, we have only claimed responsibility for the deaths of Syrian soldiers in airstrikes in September 2016.</p>
<p>This year, as if Australia wasn’t already an aircraft carrier for the US, the government <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-selling-military-equipment-to-saudi-arabia-during-brutal-yemen-conflict-20170324-gv5k7o.html">decided</a> to sell military equipment to Saudi Arabia. Overnight, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne became a dedicated arms salesman, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/defence-industry-minister-christopher-pyne-wants-australia-to-become-major-arms-exporter-20170715-gxbv4m.html">announcing</a> that he wanted Australia to become a major arms exporter on a par with Britain, France and Germany, and to use exports to cement relationships with countries in volatile regions such as the Middle East.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193305/original/file-20171105-1055-16w7meq.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Then US Defence Secretary Ash Carter greets Marise Payne and Christopher Pyne at the Pentagon in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amber I. Smith/US Defence Department</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perpetual war has devastated the Middle East. Others rightly <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/467883075935/shadow-world">argue</a> that a government that devotes the bulk of its budget to arms manufacturing implicitly makes a moral decision that militarism is more important than the creation of well-being for the population.</p>
<p>The difficulty is that Australians still aren’t told the truth about why we became involved in Syria. Those decisions seem to have been made in furtherance of unstated international coalition agendas rather than on open and objective assessments of their merit. This state of affairs is made profoundly worse by the fact that the decision to go to war was an executive decision, not a decision made democratically after full and open parliamentary debate based on the best objective information available.</p>
<p>We are fighting a difficult battle for transparency in these disturbingly Orwellian times, but the battle can and should be waged for as long as we have the will and the means to do so. Our best weapons are an accurate historical and geopolitical perspective and truth. </p>
<p>When it comes to war, our government needs to be more transparent and to open up decision-making on whether to become involved. Politicians and military personnel must be accountable for the human consequences of what they perpetrate in our name. It is our collective responsibility to do what we can to hold them to account.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Professor Gillian Triggs at the Sydney Democracy Network and the Australians for War Powers Reforms public forum.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86687/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Keane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The wars in Syria and Iraq are products of secretive decision-making by the executive. Their disastrous consequences are evidence of the need for war powers reform.John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/458442015-08-14T05:35:43Z2015-08-14T05:35:43ZThe military gambit behind Putin’s Arctic ambitions for Russian oil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91509/original/image-20150811-11059-xkin1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C1%2C1019%2C659&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Virgin territory. Sunrise over the Arctic resources battleground.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/noaaphotolib/5036390145/in/photolist-8F3PjR-5JxfWg-rvwgKL-eggnS7-5g6dG7-egAkpZ-egpXYd-5RHLv-egh8fQ-4dU9U6-5TsJx-egFxHu-ahf1vd-2YyrwM-5RJvQ-7vuZmo-egaD4n-5RHLt-eggm1m-5JBvgy-5Tjdn-b8YwMc-bUJK4t-675LZ-bk2jeP-5Tjdo-cAsa5Q-pqMM5v-pHm5t1-4c9U5E-5g6hqU-qyCfWm-rvBD5n-re3rRL-rcisWH-pqSEtA-7tp7Tv-5SNhL-5Tjdr-5RJvM-bUJHYV-4dUNCT-5TXGv-6b5zo2-4dYSjq-bUJMkg-4dUhJR-bUJAhZ-5RJvN-5T9i3">NOAA Photo Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://energy.usgs.gov/GeneralInfo/EnergyNewsroomAll/TabId/770/ArtMID/3941/ArticleID/713/Assessment-of-Undiscovered-Oil-and-Gas-in-the-Arctic.aspx">The United States Geological Survey</a> has estimated that the Arctic regions contain around 130 billion barrels of liquids and 47 trillion cubic metres of gas, equivalent to 22% of the world’s undiscovered hydrocarbon resources. It is hardly surprising then that all the countries whose coasts encircle the region, the US, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia, have made claims on territory outside of the clear boundary for each, which stretches 200 nautical miles from their shoreline. </p>
<p>Russia has been the most active. President Vladimir Putin’s latest call was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33777492">for Russia to be granted an extra 1.2m square kilometres</a> of territory based on its historic claims that the Lomonosov Ridge, which runs across most of the region, is connected to the Russian mainland and is therefore part of its territory. </p>
<p>An initial claim was made in 2001, and was reiterated when a Russian submarine <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1559264/Russian-submarine-plants-flag-at-North-Pole.html">planted its country’s flag at the North Pole in 2007</a>, but it is over the past three years that Russia has become particularly active in the region, <a href="http://www.oxfordenergy.org/2014/11/prospects-challenges-arctic-oil-development/">focusing on offshore exploration for oil and the development of a new LNG plant for gas export</a>. It’s ultimate goal, however, is as much about establishing a new power base in the North as it is about gaining an advantage in the rush for resources.</p>
<h2>Sanctions impact</h2>
<p>Hydrocarbon licences in the Arctic offshore regions <a href="http://www.rt.com/business/arctic-shelf-rosneft-gazprom-272/">have been reserved</a> for Russia’s state companies, Gazprom and Rosneft. Rosneft has become the leader of Russian attempts to exploit its vast acreage there, but its lack of experience in offshore development has meant it has needed to rely on foreign company assistance, forming joint ventures with <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d667e26c-457e-11e4-9b71-00144feabdc0.html">US firm ExxonMobil</a>, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304752804577385892170038610">Norway’s Statoil</a> and <a href="http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/115265/eni-farms-out-of-arctic-russia">Italian group ENI</a> to explore licences in the Barents and South Kara Seas. </p>
<p>The Exxon venture has been particularly successful, making an initial discovery in September 2014 which could ultimately hold seven to nine billion barrels of oil. However, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-sanctions-against-russia-work-29920">sanctions imposed on Russia</a> by the US and the EU in reaction to the Ukraine crisis have meant that activity has now been halted, much to the annoyance of the Kremlin.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ft.com/indepth/living-with-cheaper-oil">The collapse in the oil price</a> over the past 12 months might well have had a similar effect in any case, as the economics of any oil and gas fields in the harsh and expensive environment north of the Arctic Circle are dubious. Even at $100 per barrel, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/322b3b98-d76c-11e3-a47c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3igjO1IMZ">many commentators</a> were questioning the wisdom of pursuing projects which would cost many tens of billions of dollars to develop, while also bringing significant environmental risks in the case of oil spills or accidents. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91594/original/image-20150812-18074-1esowa0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart">macrotrends.net</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed some companies such as <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/350be724-070a-11e2-92ef-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3igjO1IMZ">Total</a> have decided to forego all Arctic activity for precisely this reason, and many others now see the opportunities offered by shale oil in the US and other more conventional offshore fields as preferable in an environment where cost control is vital to survival.</p>
<h2>Political chill</h2>
<p>However, this does not mean the Arctic has lost all its allure, especially as a long-term project with political as well as commercial objectives. </p>
<p>Russia’s oil production from its traditional West Siberian fields has proved remarkably robust in a low oil price environment, mainly thanks to the <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-30/rate-rise-shows-putin-likes-ruble-devaluation">benefits of rouble devaluation</a>, but <a href="http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=18051">decline is ultimately inevitable</a> due to the maturity of the assets, and the Arctic offshore is seen as one major source of new output to sustain Russia’s overall production levels. The ExxonMobil discovery with Rosneft could ultimately produce 1m barrels per day of oil, and the extent of Russia’s Arctic licences suggest that this could be multiplied many times over by new discoveries – if the oil price recovers sufficiently to allow economic returns to be made. </p>
<p>The Russian government has played its part by offering a new tax regime with more attractive terms, and has also set another trend by offering some companies specific support to develop infrastructure in the region. One important example of this is <a href="http://www.total.com/en/energies-expertise/oil-gas/exploration-production/projects-achievements/lng/yamal-lng?%FFbw=kludge1%FF">Novatek’s Yamal Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project</a>, which is an onshore gas liquefaction project in northern Siberia that is planned to be producing up to 16.5m tonnes per year of LNG by 2020.</p>
<p>The logic behind Russian government support, either fiscal or practical (Russian state companies have built the port facilities for Yamal LNG and are providing ice-breaking tankers), is of course political as much as commercial. The Kremlin is keen to encourage the development of a region which has been starved of investment in the post-Soviet era but which is set to become much more geo-politically important as warmer weather starts to open sea-lanes that had previously been closed by ice for most of the year. </p>
<p>Novatek has already set a precedent by transporting gas condensate <a href="http://novatek.ru/en/investors/events/archive/index.php?id_4=117&afrom_4=01.01.2010&ato_4=31.12.2010&from_4=2">from Russia to Asia via the Northern Route</a> , and its Yamal LNG project expects to be able to supply gas to China for five months a year via this shorter sea passage. It goes without saying that Russia opening up of the region can pave a way for other commercial operations and also for military use, as ports and other infrastructure created to support the oil and gas industry can be turned to multiple alternative uses. </p>
<p>The military context has been evident in exercises undertaken by the Russian navy in March and June this year, with the Finns feeling particularly threatened by the re-opening of airfields in the region. <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/russia-build-self-sufficient-arctic-military-force-2018-latest-sign-buildup-1866430">Russia plans to establish a standing Arctic military force by 2018</a>.</p>
<p>In this light, Putin’s claims for extra territory in the Arctic can be seen in two ways. Extra acreage can provide greater access to hydrocarbon resources for Russia’s state companies, although these may not be accessible economically depending on the price of oil and the ability of foreign companies to get involved given the current sanctions on Russia. </p>
<p>This commercial argument may take second place, though, to the drive for the Russian oil and gas industry to provide a platform for the country to dominate an increasingly accessible region as the ice starts to melt, with potentially huge geo-political and military consequences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Henderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The economic viability of extracting oil from the frozen north might be doubtful, but the geopolitical significance could be massive.James Henderson, Senior Research Fellow, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/322512014-10-22T09:30:27Z2014-10-22T09:30:27ZPolice militarization is a legacy of cold war paranoia<p>In August 2014, the police who faced protesters in Ferguson, Missouri looked more like soldiers than officers of the peace. Citizens squared off with a camouflage-clad police force <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/08/14/the-pentagon-gave-nearly-half-a-billion-dollars-of-military-gear-to-local-law-enforcement-last-year/">armed</a> with tear gas and grenade launchers, armored tactical vehicles and rifles with long-range scopes. Since then, government officials and the media have blamed police militarization on a <a href="http://www.dispositionservices.dla.mil/leso/Pages/default.aspx">US Department of Defense program</a>, begun in 1997, that provides police with free surplus military gear. But the roots of militarized policing are much older. </p>
<p>To find the origins of modern militarized policing, we have to look back to the Cold War. Starting in the 1950s, the defense department spent millions of dollars on <a href="http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=AD0633520">studies</a> that tried to explain how communists gained followers around the world. </p>
<p>Researchers working at military-funded think tanks such as RAND and the Special Operations Research Office examined how insurgents in Latin America and Southeast Asia lured people into trying to overthrow US-backed governments. This research was guided by the belief that communist activities abroad threatened national security at home. The military’s researchers wrote dozens of reports that explained <a href="http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/docrepository/dapam550_104insurgencies.pdf">how underground communist movements worked</a>. Their recommendation: the US government should create training programs for police overseas. Suggested topics for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Modernizing-Repression-Training-Building-American/dp/1558499172">instruction</a> included surveillance methods, riot control techniques, and paramilitary tactics.</p>
<p>Then in the late 1960s, the military’s researchers made a profitable discovery: the US Department of Justice and local police departments would pay them to <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/warfare-welfare">bring their research home</a>. Researchers applied their knowledge about foreign communists in an attempt to help police deal with protesters on US soil. Military experts advised police on how to contain civil rights demonstrations calling for political and economic equality and how to control demonstrations against the Vietnam War. </p>
<p>By bringing home tools and ideas created to control foreign political movements, the military’s researchers treated dissenting Americans the same way they treated the nation’s enemies abroad. The language they used in their reports showed their assumptions. One Department of Justice-funded <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Social_Conflict_and_Collective_Violence.html?id=_ijJmgEACAAJ">study</a> called student activists “revolutionaries, known trouble makers, and other anti-social elements.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/60554/original/926fw6cm-1412179937.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pentagon research justified use of tear gas by local law enforcement, like these police in Selma, Alabama in 1965.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This research treated dissent as disloyalty. It treated protest as a threat to national security and stability, and assumed that protests, if left uncontrolled, might destabilize the government. So that demonstrations did not escalate into revolution, researchers told law enforcement to <a href="https://archive.org/details/phasesofcivildis00rose">use tear gas</a> when protesters gathered. This was already common practice in many localities, but the military’s experts gave police a scholarly justification for these kinds of heavy-handed actions. </p>
<p>Minority communities often bore the brunt of these practices. The idea that civil rights activists were similar to the nation’s foreign enemies was hardly a leap for the Pentagon’s experts. <a href="https://archive.org/stream/phasesofcivildis00rose#page/16/mode/2up/search/campaigns">They warned</a> repeatedly that “underground black organizations” — which is how they described civil rights organizations — might be planning “widespread campaigns of violence.” Their ultimate fear was race war. </p>
<p>American law enforcement listened all too well to these voices from the Pentagon. The <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/16/martin-luther-king-jr-a-communist-why-he-s-been-whitewashed.html">FBI monitored Martin Luther King Jr</a> for more than a decade in a fruitless search for communist connections. And the CIA ran <a href="http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_9_CHAOS.pdf">Operation CHAOS</a>, an intelligence program that tried to discredit prominent American civil rights and anti-war activists by searching for communist puppet-masters abroad. </p>
<p>Neither operation found what it was looking for, but suspicion of protest movements lives on.</p>
<p>Assumptions about protest continue to play out in the United States. From the 1999 <a href="http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exhibits-and-education/digital-document-libraries/world-trade-organization-protests-in-seattle">Seattle</a> World Trade Organization <a href="https://aclu-wa.org/sites/default/files/attachments/WTO%20Report%20Web.pdf">protests</a>, to the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-19/new-york-city-police-arrested-252-in-yesterday-s-protests.html">Occupy</a> <a href="http://chrgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/suppressingprotest.pdf">Movement</a>, to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/27/jon-belmar-ferguson-protests_n_5726122.html">Ferguson</a>, police have continued to confront peaceful protests with strong shows of force. My research suggests they do not do this simply because they have the equipment. They do it because, since the 1960s, <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/Abstract.aspx?id=12435">police have often seen</a> domestic social movements as threats to national security and domestic stability.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100454730">my research</a>, militarization is a mindset. It is a tendency to see the world through the lens of national security, a tendency to exaggerate existing threats. In policing, this can manifest itself as a belief that physical security and calm are more important than civil liberties and that dissent can be dangerous to national security. This same mindset encourages police to treat protesting populations – and in particular minority populations – as if they might undermine the government.</p>
<p>All of which leads to the question: which is more dangerous to democracy – the small-scale violence that might occasionally accompany protest, or a militarized police force?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32251/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joy Rohde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In August 2014, the police who faced protesters in Ferguson, Missouri looked more like soldiers than officers of the peace. Citizens squared off with a camouflage-clad police force armed with tear gas…Joy Rohde, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/327732014-10-20T05:31:55Z2014-10-20T05:31:55ZCelebrate the truces – because World War I must not be an excuse for militarism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62071/original/x39d7gf3-1413541492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C800%2C553&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Quaker ambulance driver in Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Red Cross</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The government is <a href="http://www.1914.org/news/communities-unveil-the-first-victoria-cross-commemorative-paving-stones/">unveiling commemorative paving stones</a> laid in the birth places of those members of the British Empire forces in World War I who received the Victoria Cross for their bravery. The government’s stated aims are to “provide a lasting legacy of local heroes” and “honour their bravery”. All 627 Victoria Cross recipients will be so honoured over the next four years, with the promise that “no hero will be forgotten”.</p>
<p>This represents the most radical remaking of Great War commemoration for decades. It turns the emphasis from grief at a costly tragedy to lionisation of the warrior. It is a move that has more to do with the contemporary politics of militarism than with any genuine attempt to honour the memory of those who lost their lives between 1914 and 1918. The prime minister, David Cameron, candidly revealed his politics when, in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-at-imperial-war-museum-on-first-world-war-centenary-plans">unveiling plans in 2012</a> for the centenary commemorations, he said he wanted: “A commemoration that captures our national spirit in every corner of the country … like the Diamond Jubilee”.</p>
<p>What, you may ask, is wrong with celebrating heroes in this way?</p>
<h2>War to end all wars</h2>
<p>It is an attempt to rewrite the history of the war as somehow glorious and necessary. The war was an ugly clash of imperial rivalries, marked by the unspeakable horrors of trench warfare. Far from proving “the war to end of all wars”, it scarred a nation whose sons would be sent to die against the same enemy within a generation.</p>
<p>Veterans also tend to baulk at their lauding as “heroes”, explaining themselves more humbly as men just doing their jobs and looking out for their comrades. Great War memorials rarely record either rank or medals, but are starkly simple alphabetical lists of all those who had their lives taken from them. By singling out only those men who received the top military award, the government is tearing up a century of practice.</p>
<p>Why has the government taken this radical departure? The answer is in part a reaction to the public scepticism about military operations that has become mainstream with the failures of the “War on Terror”. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/15/iraq-war-mass-protest">unprecedented anti-war demonstrations</a> against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in the early 2000s may represent a sea-change in public attitudes to foreign wars. This has alarmed conservative politicians of all parties and the military top brass, who have been scrambling to regain ground ever since.</p>
<p>This began in earnest with then prime minister Gordon Brown’s <a href="http://www.ppu.org.uk/militarism/recognition_of_our_armed_forces.pdf">2008 report on the National Recognition of Our Armed Forces</a>. It identified a supposed lack of public understanding of the military due to decreased “familiarity”. The response to this perceived malady was to recommend a range of measures including celebratory home-coming parades, encouraging soldiers to wear uniforms in public and greater military presence in secondary schools and national sporting events. This was a grievous misdiagnosis: the real reason for the supposed disconnect was a reaction to the deceits and failures of Tony Blair’s Iraq invasion.</p>
<p>Cameron shared Brown’s concern about the increasing drift of British public opinion towards pacifism. The commemorative paving stones must be interpreted as a further attempt to rehabilitate the military. But Cameron has been cannier than Brown – whereas it was easy to decry the bogus logic in Brown’s initiative, it is hardly tasteful to protest at the unveiling of monument to a dead soldier.</p>
<h2>They also served …</h2>
<p>So how can we counter this shameless use of World War I to re-militarise the present? By celebrating and commemorating those who, in their foresight, opposed or questioned the industrial slaughter of World War I. These included women’s activists, Christians and political radicals who strove to recapture visions of a unified and pacific Europe – as well as the many workers who went on strike and soldiers who mutinied. These men and women exhibited great bravery, facing scorn, impoverishment, prison and death. Although widely reviled at the time, history has vindicated <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/aug/03/guardiansocietysupplement">their opposition</a> to a catastrophic conflict that decimated Europe and need never have been fought.</p>
<p>Of course, no British government will lavish funds on those types of commemorations. It falls to citizens and scholars to recover and retell these histories – as indeed they are doing up and down the country through books, talks, exhibitions, music, drama and art.</p>
<p>But these activities usually require substantial effort, particularly in researching their background. Here’s an easier suggestion: help your community celebrate the centenary of the <a href="http://www.christmastruce.co.uk/article.html">December 1914 Christmas truces</a>.</p>
<p>The truces commonly began with German soldiers putting up Christmas trees, shouting or writing Christmas greetings, and singing carols recognisable to their British counterparts. Troops met in no-man’s land to bury their dead, exchange gifts and souvenirs, share festive food and drink, sing and entertain each other, swap names and addresses, pose for photographs, conduct joint religious services, and play football. </p>
<p>These were not isolated incidents but were widespread right down the western front. Although the most famous, the 1914 Christmas truces weren’t one-off events. Throughout the entire war many combatants managed, through a “live-and-let-live” system, to reduce risk of discomfort and death by complicated local truces and tacit understandings that enraged the high commands of both sides and discredited the jingoistic propaganda that they pedalled.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=843&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/62073/original/skczhjbp-1413542804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1059&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Appalled at the horror: Siegfried Sassoon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">George Charles Beresford</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The extraordinary events of 100 Christmases ago are easy to celebrate this year, as a variety of non-profit organisations have produced <a href="http://research.ncl.ac.uk/martinlutherking/activities/worldwaronechristmastrucecommemorations/">resources</a> to help schools, churches and civic institutions mark them – and, in so doing, critically reflect on both the legacy of World War I and the continuation of war in our world.</p>
<p>The tragedy of World War I needs remembering - but not in a way that reinforces militarism today. It is fitting to recall Siegfried Sassoon’s verdict on an earlier government’s attempt to memorialise the dead, the Menin Gate in Belgium. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Who will remember, passing through this Gate<br>
the unheroic dead who fed the guns?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The poet threw his Military Cross into the Mersey in 1917 as part of what he described as “an act of wilful defiance of military authority”. His sombre verdict on what the fallen may have thought of the Menin Gate’s “peace complacent stone” is worth recalling as the government of today lays paving stones around the country:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime<br>
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/32773/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Megoran is Co-Convenor of the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee </span></em></p>The government is unveiling commemorative paving stones laid in the birth places of those members of the British Empire forces in World War I who received the Victoria Cross for their bravery. The government’s…Nick Megoran, Lecturer in Political Geography, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/247352014-04-23T20:06:35Z2014-04-23T20:06:35ZAnzac Day: are we in danger of compassion fatigue?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44778/original/kn7nwx2c-1395811808.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why has Anzac Day and the concept of 'Anzac' experienced such a resurgence in recent years, particularly among young people?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thousands of young Australians will gather at Gallipoli this Anzac Day. Our TV screens will fill with faces in the cold light of early dawn, a tear trickling down the cheek in sadness that so many died so young. Around Australia, descendants of veterans will attend marches and wear the family’s medals with pride.</p>
<p>But when I was a teenager in the 1980s, I would not have been seen dead wrapped in an Australian flag on Anzac Day. My friends and I never talked about including a trip to Gallipoli on a backpacking holiday.</p>
<p>So what has changed between the 1980s and 2014? Why has Anzac <a href="http://journals.publishing.monash.edu/ojs/index.php/ha/article/view/988/1520">experienced such a resurgence</a>? The tears at dawn services provide a clue. Anzac’s continuing power in the 21st century stems from the ways in which trauma has come to sit at its very core. </p>
<p>Australians will better understand the current embrace of Anzac if we stop confusing it with a love of militarism. Anzac is a mythology with its origins in the exploits of men at war, but there is little talk today of weakling enemies and soldiers as exemplars of military manhood.</p>
<p>For example, in 2014, the Australian Defence Force collaborated with the Sydney Theatre Company to perform <a href="http://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/the-long-way-home-tour.aspx">The Long Way Home</a>. Professional actors and army personnel star in the play, which explores the sacrifices and challenges faced by Australian servicemen and women and their families. The play is part of the official Centenary of Anzac program, and the outgoing Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley, <a href="http://news.defence.gov.au/2014/02/09/the-long-way-home-officially-opens/">described it as</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…deeply emotive and a powerful reminder of the trauma of war. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For narratives to survive and thrive, they must speak to deeply held concerns and obsessions of the culture. Trauma is one of them.</p>
<h2>The rise of PTSD</h2>
<p>The changed attitude towards Anzac, which began in the 1980s, was exactly coincident with new understandings of trauma and victimhood. In 1980, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was <a href="http://report.nih.gov/NIHfactsheets/ViewFactSheet.aspx?csid=58">first classified</a> as a psychiatric condition. As a consequence, victims gained new cultural status and legitimacy. </p>
<p>PTSD effectively revolutionised the way war neurosis, and trauma more generally, was understood. Previously, most psychiatry considered that combat exacerbated a pre-existing mental condition or weakness in neurosis cases. With the introduction of PTSD, the event itself was considered the trigger, making any healthy person vulnerable to its impact.</p>
<p>Cultural attention began to turn to events that produced such trauma. War was a case in point. Those who survived it, the traumatised, become its new star witnesses. Vietnam veterans, reconfigured as the psychiatric casualties of a misbegotten war, began to win the sympathy that had eluded them.</p>
<h2>The role of women</h2>
<p>Yet in Australia it was feminists, not Vietnam veterans, who first rekindled interest in Anzac. Groups such as Women Against Rape <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Fgk4AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=women+against+rape+anzac+day&source=bl&ots=pcZ1utYqKa&sig=UEsehPsl8oUxT9dkWLZpMQquQY8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-FgyU4vgA8m8kgXkioCQCQ&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=women%20against%20rape%20anzac%20day&f=false">protested</a> at Anzac Day services in Australian cities from the late 1970s. Anzac was back on the front page in bold black letters, not because it was popular, but because it was, allegedly, being defiled.</p>
<p>Feminist protesters against rape in war became the unlikely bellwethers of a new era. Undoubtedly, the open discussion of sexual violence in war was an awkward intrusion of a gendered critique into this most masculine of institutions. The obscene gestures and abuse to which feminists were subject is proof enough of that. </p>
<p>And yet, at the same time, feminists gave new space and voice to understandings of war as a traumatising event.</p>
<p>In 1985, one Vietnam veteran disrupted a women’s protest on Anzac Day when he climbed aboard their float, removed his prosthesis and waved a pink plastic leg, complete with laced shoe, in the air. One newspaper <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=MDQ-9Oe3GGUC&dat=19850426&printsec=frontpage&hl=en">commented</a> at the time that the lost leg was “the most brilliant anti-war banner of all”.</p>
<p>It did not take long before the traumatised male war veteran displaced the raped woman as the leading motif of war damage. By the early 1990s, feminist protests on Anzac Day were a thing of the past. </p>
<p>Anzac may have shed its more militaristic overtones, but clings resolutely to its privileging of men’s suffering. The fact that a few women, usually nurses, have been admitted as “Anzac Angels” does not undermine that broader point.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44842/original/pcwsddgg-1395873450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Embracing the trauma of war has been Anzac’s salvation in terms of its reinvention for a new generation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Today and the future</h2>
<p>Australians live now in a culture saturated with traumatic memories and understandings of victimhood that incite profound sympathy and give voice to those who have suffered. Think only of the <a href="http://www.nsdc.org.au/stolen-generations/history-of-the-stolen-generations/the-history-of-the-stolen-generations">stolen generations</a> and the <a href="http://forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au/">forgotten Australians</a>. Their stories have changed the way Australians view history, which is more often than not seen as a wound or scar that leaves a trace on a nation’s soul.</p>
<p>Anzac, with its boy soldiers and its emaciated prisoners of war, is a story that resonates with the tenor of our times. It also puts the mainstream back into the picture of suffering, indeed at its very centre, at a time when competing histories have threatened to displace it.</p>
<p>Embracing the trauma of war has been Anzac’s salvation in terms of its reinvention for a new generation, but may well prove its Achilles’ heel. If and when we tire of watching individuals suffer, struggle and battle their demons on reality TV, which is a symptom of our culture’s obsession with trauma, Australians may well move on from the heartstrings version of Anzac that is its present incarnation.</p>
<p>Anzac’s appeal rests on an eagerness to hear about suffering. Because trauma can happen to anyone, we think we understand what happened to them and, in that shared sense of pain, we become one. People wrap themselves in flags and bedeck themselves with old campaign medals and feel a connection with the past. </p>
<p>Still, empathy is a precarious foundation for unity, and raises the possibility that by 2015 – the centenary of the first landings at Gallipoli – we might all be suffering from compassion fatigue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24735/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Twomey receives funding from the ARC.</span></em></p>Thousands of young Australians will gather at Gallipoli this Anzac Day. Our TV screens will fill with faces in the cold light of early dawn, a tear trickling down the cheek in sadness that so many died…Christina Twomey, Professor of History, ARC Future Fellow, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.