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Geopolitical studies on the subterranean have tended to portray underground spaces (including tunnels and caves) as closely imbricated with warfare, violence and militarism. This paper departs from existing literatures insofar as it explores how peaceful ideas and relationships can similarly be fostered through the subterranean realm. Using the case of the Zhaishan Tunnel located on the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, we demonstrate how this site has converted from a defensive structure against the military antagonisms from mainland China to one that is largely associated with rapprochement tourism for the cultivation of benign China-Taiwan relations. Specifically, by drawing on the concept of affective atmosphere, we argue that the elemental and material aspects of the tunnel have been strategically deployed to affectively shore up Chinese and Taiwanese visitors' collective memories in order to re-orientate their dispositions towards peaceful cross-strait futures. In so doing, we demonstrate how affective atmosphere can be analytically productive in examining the elemental and embodied dimensions of subterranean geopolitics. It not only enables critical appreciation of the ways in which different elemental materialities impact upon subjective feelings in/of subterranean spaces. More crucially, it also encourages incisive reflections into the agency and politics behind the conjoining of the elemental and bodily for the (re)making of subterranean geopolitics.

In 2020, the actualizing of another Government program called Patriotic education of Russian Federation citizens has been fulfilled. The main subject of the program is school students, as the Analysis of their idea of patriotism provides us with a Great chance to evaluate the effectiveness of patriotic education in Russian Federation, as well as to find the dominating idea of a citizen in minds of the Youth. In this article, based on Data coming from a mass Survey of senior school students from Siberian Federal District, we define students ideas of patriotism, as well as forms of behavior, acceptable for a patriot, and finally, subjects and reasons for Russian patriotism development and establishing. It was found that the idea of patriotism among school students is quite stereotypical with explicit retrospective, militaristic and imperial tendencies. There is also a correlation between patriotic identity and national identity. Thus, the school students who identify as Russians are highly patriotic, while school students with local national identity are less keen to be patriotic, according to their own words.

The persistence of the Kurdish conflict in the Middle East has created deadly outcomes for Turkey’s democratization process and facilitated the emergence of an authoritarian coalition promoting exclusive nationalism from above. While consolidation of the authoritarian rule in Turkey occurred in parallel to the rise of exclusive nationalism and regional militarism, the electoral authoritarian regime is currently facing multiple challenges. As the economic recession deepens, a new wave of ethnonationalism targeting the Kurds and immigrants is in the making, but this time from below. The possibility of democratic change in the future seems to depend on to what extent main opposition parties will be able to distance themselves from exclusive nationalism and build a pro-democracy alliance including the People’s Democratic Party (HDP).

This paper examines the roots and outcomes of Polish-Libyan military cooperation between 1970 and 1990. From the early 1970s onward, Muammar Gaddafi spent millions of US dollars purchasing military...

Using new data from the National Sports and Society Survey ( N = 3993), this study first examines the extent to which US adults recognize that sports teach love of country, competition as a way of life, respect for the military, and how to be American. We characterize this sport and society process as American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism. Then, multiple regression analyses are used to assess the extent to which dominant statuses, indicators of traditionalism, and sports fandom are associated with beliefs about American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism and its component values. Results suggest that US adults commonly agree that sports teach love of country, competition as a way of life, respect for the military, and how to be American; they are especially likely to agree that sports teach competition as a way of life and love of country. Many US adults also recognize sports as teaching respect for the military and how to be American, but most do not. In addition, as expected, identifying as male, heterosexual, Christian, Republican, and as more of a sports fan is consistently and positively associated with agreeing that sports teach patriotic, capitalistic, militaristic, and nationalistic values. In contrast to expectations, we find evidence that White adults are less likely than Black and Latinx adults to recognize American Institutionalized Sports Nationalism and its component values; college educated adults are also less likely than those with a high school education or less to agree that sports teach patriotism, capitalism, militarism, and nationalism. This may be because sports have traditionally been perceived to offer rather inclusive and fair social and economic opportunities for non-Whites and the less educated. Regardless, it is important to continue to research which cultural messages are promoted through sports, why, and to what effect. The present study advances this research initiative.

Drawing on Debord’s the society of the spectacle and Evans and Giroux’s notion of the spectacle of violence, this paper argues that a discourse on war, organised violence, and global politics has b...

Africa’s security landscape has been experiencing securitised-development practices through counterterrorism activities from donor countries engaged in the ‘Global War on Terror’ (GWOT). While some...

Corporations often claim to be economic actors solely interested in capital accumulation. However, historical and anthropological scholarship has argued they have had outsized political roles, especially during high colonialism when transnational corporations such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company shaped colonial entities. This article explores the case of American mining company Freeport-McMoRan, which runs the world’s largest gold and copper mine in West Papua, and its entanglement with contemporary imperial and colonial projects in the region. Through the study of the company’s decisive role in the transfer of West Papua from the Dutch to Indonesia during the decolonization period of the 1960s, and in the formation of the postcolonial Indonesian state characterized by its militaristic and capitalistic stances, this article argues that Freeport’s operation in West Papua has been central to shaping U.S. imperial policy in Southeast Asia. The company’s relationship with the U.S. government and its contract of work with the Indonesian government reproduce an older form of state-corporation partnership called a charter, which grants a corporate body privileges associated with exploration, trade, and colonization. Combining a historical study of the political role of corporations across time and an ethnographic study of Freeport’s operation, this article rethinks the anthropological and historical study of transnational corporations and their roles in the contemporary politics of colonialism.

This article seeks to challenge conventional arguments about Israel’s ‘cultural militarism’ through a comparative analysis of Independence Day parades of the 1950s. Using media reports, newsreels, and archival documentation, it examines the parades and compares them to other cases from around the world. The discussion focuses on three features of the Israeli parades: the widespread civil criticism of the place of the military in Independence Day celebrations; the role of the crowds and their proximity to the marchers; and the partly militaristic character of the parades themselves. While the article does not deny the obvious militaristic connotations of soldiers marching in the streets, it stresses the unique relationship between the armed forces and society in Israel and argues that militarism alone is not a sufficient analytic framework for analyzing Israeli society.

The coup attempt of July 1936 that began the Spanish Civil War differed from its predecessors in that the rebel officers sought to remake both the Spanish state and society. The roots of this new brand of military interventionism have been traced to Spain’s colonial wars in Morocco, but this article argues that they extended further back to the rebel officers’ training at Spain’s Infantry Academy, where, in the wake of defeat in the Spanish-American War, Regenerationist reformers within the academy recast the moral training that cadets received so that they felt it was the army’s duty to lead a transformation of Spanish society to return it to the imagined glories of Spain’s past.1

This essay brings Douglas John Hall’s engagement with the theology of the cross for a post-Christendom context into dialogue with the political theology of Russkii mir by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Russkii mir is a theology that claims to be Christendom reborn. It signals a new alliance between the ROC and the Russian Federation by sanctioning military conquest of foreign lands, including Crimea and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. This essay documents the emergence of this new political theology in terms of its historical precedents and how this history is being distorted, and even invented, to justify the claims to Christendom. Particular attention is given to the architecture and militaristic symbolism for the newly christened Cathedral for the Russian Armed Forces, dedicated on June 14th, 2020. Finally, these claims are critically examined using Hall’s theology of the cross as a disestablishment for all such “theologies of glory” in light of scripture, tradition, and the true mission of the church. I also bring Hall’s work into dialogue with similar thought from the Orthodox East.

Maria Rashid. 2020. Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 267 pp., Price $28.00, ISBN: 9781503610415 (Hardback).

La República que nació como una forma ideal de régimen político en Grecia con Platón y tuvo su desarrollo posterior con Cicerón en Roma, ha teniendo una recepción diversa en plurales experiencias mundiales, así en América hubo dos lecturas extremas de este concepto una en EE.UU. y otra en sudamericana, en nuestro medio la idea se nacionalizo con formas autocráticas desde su origen. El Perú no ha completado una evaluación histórica, que vaya más allá de las versiones de la ciencia política que la asocian en muchos casos al militarismo creando republicas cesaristas, carentes de prácticas democráticas y débiles instituciones jurídicas. En el origen de la independencia se produjo un debate doctrinal que enfrento dos versiones sobre la gobernabilidad deseada, no obstante, tras el establecimiento de la Republica (1822) sobrevino una larga transición que produjo crisis, desgobierno y anarquía que la republica no pudo contener ni prever, a pesar de sus densas Constituciones que se reafirmaban republicanas. En los últimos años un creciente interés académico del tema demuestra que esta evaluación histórica no ha concluido en el Perú.

In this article, the author shares a personal reflection of his military and educational experiences in the aftermath of 9/11. He describes his concerns about the ongoing “War on Terror” and the disengaged militarism of the United States and how this has shaped his approach in the classroom. Expanding on his personal experiences, he calls for social studies educators to employ critical pedagogy and peace education to help students develop as thoughtfully and critically engaged citizens who are capable of creating a more peaceful world.

This article explores the neglected connection between race and militarism by focusing on a US missile defense system deployed in South Korea. In September of 2017, the two countries installed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in a rural village. Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, this missile defense system was to protect South Korea from attacks by North Korea. The system is integral to US global military strategy, but from the perspective of human security, its benefits are dubious at best. By drawing on a theory of the ‘racial state’ and critical studies of the US empire-state, the article examines two fundamental practices of the neocolonial military relation between the two states: wartime Operational Control of the South Korean military and extraterritoriality of US bases in South Korea. It argues that these neocolonial practices in which the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system deployment is embedded reflect ‘the historicist racial ruling’ that denies self-rule for Koreans and its internalization by Koreans who support the unequal military relation. It also analyzes how the South Korean racial state promotes internal homogeneity and otherizes North Korea to bolster national security through the missile defense system.

The purpose of this article is to determine whether the final transformation of the German Conservative Party (Deutschkonservative Partei; DKP) into a right-wing radical organisation, that lost its...

The religious moderation campaign for millennials faces many challenges. The facts on the ground show that the phenomenon of radicalism is deeply rooted. The moderation program offered by the government has lost its reputation with the radicalism movement which is packaged attractively and in accordance with current trends. Through a qualitative approach and a radical paradigm of humanism, this study then tries to explore the root cause of the strengthening of radicalism and how complexities are faced by the discourse of religious moderation. This study then found several conclusions including, First, the moderation movement has been less fast and less attractive to millennials compared to the opposite movement. Second, the geneological roots of moderation and radicalism are not finished and are related to the relationship between religion and the post-independence state. Third, the influence of transnational radicalism. Fourth, socio-political-economic factors, including poverty, state violence, legal injustice, political instability, racial issues, militarism and so on. The only opportunity that the discourse of religious moderation has is the pre-independence cultural roots, through strengthening cultural values, Islamic treasures (intellectual Islam) and the welfare economic movement. If such opportunities are not utilized, the movement and discourse of religious moderation will run aground in the middle of the road.

Conflict-related sexual violence has become an increasingly visible issue for feminists as well as various international actors. One of the ways in which global policymakers have tried to tackle th...

The essay discusses the rise of Nazism and Militarism during interwar Germany and Japan. It compares the similarities and differences that existed in the social, economic, and political environment of the two countries. The essay approaches the topic by analyzing the cause and effect of economic depression, social upheaval, and unique political propaganda. The paper intends to provide information about circumstances when extremism revives, and thus to avoid similar conditions in the future.

The past ten years have witnessed a revival in scholarship on militarism, through which scholars have used the concept to make sense of the embeddedness of warlike relations in contemporary liberal societies and to account for how the social, political and economic contours of those same societies are implicated in the legitimation and organization of political violence. However, a persistent shortcoming has been the secondary role of race and coloniality in these accounts. This article demonstrates how we might position racism and colonialism as integral to the functioning of contemporary militarism. Centring the thought and praxis of the US Black Panther Party, we argue that the particular analysis developed by Black Panther Party members, alongside their often-tense participation in the anti–Vietnam War movement, offers a strong reading of the racialized and colonial politics of militarism. In particular, we show how their analysis of the ghetto as a colonial space, their understanding of the police as an illegitimate army of occupation and, most importantly, Huey Newton’s concept of intercommunalism prefigure an understanding of militarism premised on the interconnections between racial capitalism, violent practices of un/bordering and the dissolving boundaries between war and police action.

How individuals interpret the justifications for historical war can have a large effect on how they see modern warfare (McCorkle, W. 2017; Harris 2008). In the social studies classroom, particularl...

Field Marshal Count Terauchi’s personal surrender of swords to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten in November 1945 highlights some of the complexities related to the Japanese surrender in Southeast Asia. Japanese swords served as important symbols for both their owners and the Allies. Mountbatten’s determination to dispossess the Japanese of their swords reflected his views on Japan’s militarism and a desire to impress upon soldiers their subservience to British authority when most had not been directly defeated in battle. On the other hand, Mountbatten was constrained by the huge area placed under his command, the lack of resources at his disposal and rising nationalist resistance. In these circumstances, Mountbatten sought the co-operation of surrendered Japanese personnel in British interests. The issue of surrendering Japanese swords underlines Mountbatten’s conflicting objectives and Count Terauchi’s efforts to manipulate the situation.

Since the late 1950s, Third World nationalism in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Middle East had fascinated radical Quebec nationalists. Quebec nationalism’s militant arm, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), styled itself as a national-liberation movement fighting against Anglo-Canadian exploitation and oppression. After the Six-Day-War, the PLO became a significant source of inspiration for these elements. Quebec was their Palestine, as one prominent Quebec Nationalist asserted. This militant Quebec nationalism coincided and often overlapped with the rise of the New Left at Quebec’s universities and in its unions. Like its European and American counterparts, the Quebec New Left adopted the ideologies of anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, and in 1972, the Quebec-Palestine Association was established in this milieu. Anti-imperialism combined the Marxist analysis of class struggle with a nationalistic worldview, which saw the world divided between oppressor and oppressed nations. For the New Left, Israel became the epitome of an oppressor nation. It was associated with all the supposed vices of the West: Racism, capitalism, inauthenticity, and militarism. This paper sheds light on the founding years of the Quebec anti-Zionist movement in the early 1970 and discusses the themes and images it used to describe Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Furthermore, the paper investigates whether these articulations a genuine critique of Zionism and Israeli policies or whether they were, instead, a reflection of antisemitic stereotypes. Moreover, the paper compares Quebec anti-Zionism to parallel manifestations of New Left anti-Zionism in Germany, asking whether the cultural context in Quebec affected the message of anti-Zionism.

Contrary to widespread belief, reparations imposed on Germany by the economic provisions of the Treaty of Versailles did not undermine the German economy, nor push it into a vicious cycle of crises and backwardness, from which emerged National Socialism and Adolf Hitler’s power takeover. In the first decade after the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s economy prospered, with high growth rates. In the same decade, German National Socialists managed to win over only a negligible segment of the constituency, and Franco-German relations even improved. The turn took place with the Great Depression, which was, however, not related to the Treaty of Versailles whatsoever. Thus, it is a myth that the Treaty, predominantly through its economic provisions, led to the Second World War. The shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles, with regard to providing sustainable peace in Europe, should be sought in the framework of the outcome of the First World War, which ended in an armistice, not German surrender. It was only after the Second World War that German unconditional surrender, full occupation of the country and dismemberment of German militarism created the grounds for political stability and sustainable peace in Europe.

This article details our exploration of the ways in which gender, militarism, and learning intersect in war museums in Canada, England, and Europe. We outline our theoretical framework of feminist ...

The article analyzes reactions to the outbreak of World War I in the Habsburg Crownland of Salzburg. Based on a detailed examination of local sources, such as diaries, memoirs, church and gendarmerie chronicles, regional newspapers, and administrative records, the study sheds light on the complexity of responses and emotions elicited during the summer of 1914. Engaging with recent historiography on the question of “war enthusiasm” and the “August experience,” the ensuing analysis allows for profound insights into how the local population reacted to the news of the Sarajevo assassinations, Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia, and the subsequent declaration of war, mobilization, and the first weeks of the conflict. The article highlights the role of the press, governmental policies, and repression as key factors in creating an agitated atmosphere to which people responded in different ways, depending on age, class, gender, and the urban–rural divide. At times, frenzied patriotic mobilization occurred alongside not only a widespread acceptance of the obligation to do one's duty, but also—and equally—great uncertainty and anxiety. This highlights the complexities of public reactions in the summer of 1914, thereby challenging from a regional historical perspective the notion of an “enthusiastic” welcoming of the war.

This article explores how hope and visions of the future have left their mark on media discourse in Turkey. Looking back at some of the events that took place in the 1980s, a decade that was shaped by the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, and considering them alongside what has happened since the ban of Istanbul’s Pride march in 2015, it examines traces of hope in two periods of recent Turkish history characterized by authoritarianism. Drawing on an array of visual and textual material drawn from the tabloid press, magazines, newspapers, and digital platforms, it inquires into how queer hope manages to infiltrate mediated publics even in times of pessimism and hopelessness. Based upon analysis of an archive of discourses on resistance, solidarity, and future, it argues that queer hope not only helps to map out possible future routes for queer lives in (and beyond) Turkey, but also operates as a driving political force that sustains queers’ determination to maintain their presence in the public sphere despite repressive nationalist, militarist, Islamist, and authoritarian regimes.