Search

Despite the years of research scholars have undergone to discuss The Best Years of our Lives' men, this paper takes a new approach and looks at the film's women, their agency, and their sexuality. By understanding Millie (Myrna Loy), Peggy (Teresa Wright), Wilma (Cathy O'Donnell), and Marie (Virginia Mayo), their use of bedroom spaces, and the ways in which they remove military markers from, and apply civilian ones to, their men, I argue that these women make their respective partners into what they want them to be and resist the saint-like image of maternal postwar womanhood that has historically been attributed to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore two roles assumed by Turkey in the international environment: the one of uncomfortable state actor for the West and the neighbourhood, even problematic at times, and the one of regional "balancer", interested in identifying the appropriate course of action to end the war of Russia against Ukraine. Capitalising on its imperial heritage as well as its geographical location, Turkey has over time had a number of strengths which it has exploited in its international relations to achieve its interests. The year 2023 brought with it the reconfirmation of a new mandate of President Erdogan, aspect seen as decisive in the configuration of the mentioned image - of an inconvenient actor - of Turkey. However, this Turkey, considered by many to be inconvenient, has remained extremely consistent in its relation to the Russian-Ukrainian war, manifesting itself as a "balancer" by attempting to create favourable premises for its conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an adjusted Westminster-style system with large executive room for maneuver in matters of foreign, security, and defense policies, Australia's parliament does not have a formal say in sending troops abroad despite the continental nation's constant military deployments, i.e. alongside its major ally, the United States. Past efforts from Democrats and Greens to push legislation giving parliament ex ante voting rights have been stymied by Labor-Liberal bipartisanism opposing it. However, given increasing political fragmentation and the politicization of military deployments, post-Cold War politics gives testament to dissent on the use of force, decision-making on it, and the reach of oversight between political parties. Linking the Australian case to contemporary scholarship on the party politics of security and defense policy, this article focuses on the party-political component of contestation and explores patterns of dissent and consensus on the use of force, decision-making, and oversight. Using voting, debate, interview data, and taking stock of the most recent parliamentary inquiry into war powers, the article demonstrates Australian parallels with party-political contestation in other countries. However, it also highlights that debate and agency in Australia do only follow those in other Westminster systems to some extent, while Australian parties put an even higher emphasis on decision-making efficiency in an insecure strategic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, "new war" thinking has become a significant focus in military debates. The central contention of "new war" thinking is that post-Cold War conflicts are essentially different from those of the late modern era, such as World War I and World War II. The alleged novelty of post-Cold Wars has been vehemently challenged. Critics have maintained that "new war" scholars underestimate the lasting influence of the past on today's conflicts and attempt to radically change the way we think about war without providing empirically grounded arguments. The debate on the nature vs. character of war has significantly enriched the literature on the subject. However, there is a crucial oversight in the current literature: the power dynamics embedded in "new war" thinking. This article critically examines whether they rely purely on academic views of war by comparing Western, Russian, and Chinese perspectives. It argues that most exemplars of "new war" thinking are highly value-laden, based on certain national/civilizational security threat assessments that reflect the narrow strategic concerns of the great powers. So, playing on Robert Cox's famous dictum on the role of theories, "new war" concepts are generally for some states and for some purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kings and generals used to issue a letter to announce the victory and conquest of the new territory with their own handwriting or the composition of their court secretary after the end of the war or the successful conclusion of the military campaigns in other lands. This letter is referred to as the Fatḥnāme (book of conquest). This study seeks to investigate the process of development, evolution, and independence of prose Fatḥnāmes in the Persian literature. The study's questions are when did Fatḥnāmes become popular as an independent type of court and sultanic writing and which Persian literary genre do Fatḥnāmes belong to? To answer the questions, the process of development and independence of Fatḥnāmes is first examined using a descriptive method. Then, the position of Fatḥnāmes as a literary genre is explained in terms of form, structure, and function using an analytical method. The results shows that Fatḥnāmes were initially implicit and secondary writing in the historical texts written in news language and gained independence and were gradually written in literary and artistic language since the 6th century (AH). The principles and manners of their writing were then developed in the books of Monša'āt and techniques of letter writing. In terms of literary genre, Fatḥnāmes are literary and short narratives of victory in war, which have an epic aspect and are written to legitimize war and preserve the power and rule of kings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carl von Clausewitz's political theory of war was the source of many disagreements over readings of its most popular theses. Foucault viewed it as part of a broader political-legal discourse of sovereignty, which underlies modern biopower. Foucault's contemporary commentators try to develop his position by arguing the analogy between the discourse prevailing in Clausewitz's time and the contemporary neoliberal discourse and technological revolution on the battlefield, which create a new order of power. However, postmodernists focusing on showy stylistics in their assessments rely on a mythologized narrative about Clausewitz, reducing his theories to a discourse of war as a way for nation-states to conduct foreign policy. In this article, Clausewitz shows that his theory goes much deeper and provides a critical perspective on the relationship between war and politics. The dialectical structure makes it possible to understand war as a historically variable but constantly policy-dependent phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Phainomena is the property of Phenomenological Society of Ljubljana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Academic scholarship and political commentary endlessly debate the President's independent constitutional power to start wars. And yet, every major U.S. war in the last sixty years was fought pursuant to war-initiation power that Congress gave to the President in the form of authorizations for the use of military force. As a practical matter, the central constitutional question of modern war initiation is not the President's independent war power; it is Congress's ability to delegate its war power to the President. It was not until quite late in American history that the practice of war power delegation became well accepted as a domestic law basis for starting wars. This Article examines the development of war power delegations from the founding era to the present to identify when and how war power delegations became a broadly accepted practice. As this Article shows, the history of war power delegation does not provide strong support for either of two common but opposite positions: that war power, as a branch of foreign affairs powers, is special in ways that make it exceptionally delegable; or that it is special in ways that make it uniquely nondelegable. More broadly, that record counsels against treating "foreign affairs delegations" as a single category, and it reveals that constitutional questions of how Congress exercises war power are as significant as whether it does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: Based on the Colombian case, an interpellation of the concept of sovereignty in contemporary critical political theory is proposed from a feminist, queer, and decolonial perspective through the analysis of the role of cruelty against LGBTIQ+ people in establishing a form of para-institutional sovereign power in neoliberal wars. Methodology: This theoretical research is supported by documentary analysis of the reports of the National Center of Historical Memory of Colombia. Conclusions: The colonial and cisheteropatriarchal circulation of cruelty is shown to be an essential element in installing a disciplinary power that affects society as a whole and establishes a specific form of sovereign power. In the neoliberal stage of capital, this form updates a government of bodies that distinguishes between citizenship and colonial subjects and is constitutive of the nation-state. Originality: Demonstrating this hypothesis has the consequence of unveiling a specific form of exercise of power that produces bodies through the establishment of what I call the government of suffering, which I define as control, rationalization, and administration of suffering. This form of power goes beyond the reading framework suggested by the paradigms of biopolitics and necropolitics; thus, to encompass this dimension of the political, I propose the concept of pathospolitics, understood as the form of power that turns suffering into an object of government and is deployed through this government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the 1970s, historical investigations about the influences of political power and wars in the formation and transformation of societies were resumed from a new perspective. The development of the New Military History enabled the study of military relations as decisive factors for the alteration of socio-cultural structures. In this sense, this article aims to analyze, from the Rule of the Order of the Knights Templar, how the fusion of monastic religious values with military techniques, enabled the creation of a new institution: the warrior monks. We will highlight issues related to discipline and obedience, as guiding axes for the action of knights in battle, as well as the impact of these behaviors on the results of conflicts, making the Order one of the most prestigious military institutions of the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Filosofía (0034-8244) is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On 1 March 2003, the Turkish government's war power motion failed in Parliament even though most legislators had voted in favour of it, keeping Turkey out of the war in Iraq. This outcome reflected the anti-war sentiment among the Turkish public but confounded Turkish-American relations. The Turkish case shows that, contrary to one of the main assertations of the actor-specific perspectives, parliaments can play an important role in foreign policy decision making. How can Turkish legislative war powers be explained? This study argues that the distinct position of the Parliament can best be analysed by exploring the historical evolution of war powers across the constitutions since the late Ottoman period, focusing on several critical junctures during a long path that turned Parliament into a key veto player in foreign policy making, capable of frustrating the executive's intention to join a war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As power is everywhere, so is pleasure. Though we may be accustomed to understanding military violence and private pleasure as fundamentally separate, or at least as phenomena that seldom interact, this special issue contends that they are deeply interpenetrated in ways that reveal a great deal about contemporary culture, politics, and subjectivity. If one does think of pleasure and militarisation, perhaps the readiest to come to mind are the histories of depraved torture via sexual humiliation and the high rates of sexual abuse in the military, among other instances of the ways that explicit militarised violence is catalysed by pleasure. Rather than attend to pleasure as a weapon of war, however, for this special issue, we focus on the ways that militarisation is normalised, mobilised, felt, and imagined in the mundane sites in the civilian sphere. By collecting essays that explore the interaction of militarisation and pleasure in sites as diverse as cookbooks, video games, and anti-trans rhetoric, this special issue explores: What affective, consumptive, and sensorial regimes enable us to consider ourselves untouched by militarised infrastructures and state forces? How can we nonetheless sense our militarisation through sites of pleasure? How does militarisation function through our enjoyment? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the constraint President's face in matters of foreign policy is generally of the view that they are largely free to do as they please. Some research however posits that Congressional constrain on the executive is in fact much larger than it is given credit for. Using their research as a jumping off point, I re-examine this matter by asking when the President will seek ex ante Congressional authorization for the use of force. I estimate this potential effect of Congressional constraint on the President by looking at US initiated militarized interstate disputes with at least one fatality. In so doing, it is demonstrated that no Congressional constrain exists in this regard; the President rarely seeks ex ante authorization for the use of force and is therefore not truly constrained in its use. In fact, evidence is brought to bear that if anything the diversionary theory of war initiation may hold water; inflation is shown herein to be negatively linked to ex ante Congressional authorization for the use of force. It seems as though the President is less likely to ask Congress for permission to conduct deadly military operations when inflation is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 and the subsequent global response have had a profound impact on the public health, economic health, and political health in nearly every country. This article examines the biopolitics of power and pandemics in war. Three case studies are presented: the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918–1920 and responses to the COVID-19 outbreak in both Syria and in eastern Ukraine. The pandemic's impact has been particularly acute in active warzones, undermining the ability of governments and organizations to enforce public health recommendations, provide for the care of patients, secure supplies, and transmit information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polemos is the property of Croatian Sociological Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Discourse is an important and effective tool, and has a close relationship with the institution of power in war. Hyakuta Naoki's The Eternal Zero (Eien no Zero 永遠の0) is about Japanese soldiers during World War II; it exposes this relationship and hidden things behind the militaristic government's discourses. Through the novel, Hyakuta Naoki brings a different, little-known perspective on the Japanese soldiers during the war. They are no longer presented as fanatical and extremist terrorists, they are just ordinary people with deep feelings and emotions. By explaining the causes and motives leading to the consent or resistance behaviors of Japanese soldiers with the institution of power, the discourse reveals the war crimes committed by the militaristic government, and shows us the message of peace, anti-war and human values that The Eternal Zero and the writer Hyakuta Naoki wants to convey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been understood by Marxists, including Marx himself, that primitive accumulation was not limited to the historical origins of capitalism. Instead, extra-economic processes of capital accumulation continue to be relevant throughout the subsequent development of capitalism. An examination of the classic analyses of primitive accumulation made by Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg suggests that the most significant contemporary interpretation of the concept—David Harvey's accumulation by dispossession—fails to properly account for the role played by war and military power in capital accumulation today. This is the product of both a problematic interpretation of Marx's and Luxemburg's analyses of primitive accumulation as well as a problematic interpretation of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. I argue that Marx and Luxemburg continue to offer a more fruitful foundation from which to address this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do laws of war applicable to International Armed Conflicts (IAC s) authorize targeting and detention or do they simply regulate targeting and detention as an exercise of power in war by belligerents without providing authorization? This question has been the subject of debate in the recent past. The traditional understanding of laws of war, simply as a protective regime has come under increasing challenge from claims laws of war authorize targeting and detention in International Armed Conflicts. While these claims have mainly been made to establish in laws of war satisfaction for the requirement of Human rights law for a legal basis for targeting and detention, the transmutation of what in the perspective of laws of war is simply an exercise of power into legal permission has consequences beyond that relationship. It also impacts the relationship between laws of war and jus ad bellum, and more gravely it cloaks what is an otherwise exercise of brute power in war with the garb of legal competence. It transmutes what is simply might into right. The transmutation, re characterizes an IAC from the perspective of laws of war as simply a fact, into its legal construct. Therefore, this paper interrogates the nature of the laws of war, to show they simply regulate targeting and detention in IAC s without providing legal permission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During his four years in office, Congress made historic challenges to President Donald Trump's authority as Commander in Chief, twice invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution. The first resolution, passed in 2019, expressed disapproval of the U.S.' logistical and material support for Saudi Arabia's campaign against the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen. The second challenge occurred in 2020 after Trump authorized a drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qassam Soleimani. In response, Congress passed a WPR that stipulated that any future military action against the regime would require express legislative authorization. Using a case study approach, this essay examines why Congress chose to employ the WPR as a policy tool after decades of dormancy. Ultimately, I argue that a confluence of factors compelled majorities in both chambers of Congress to use the War Powers Resolution to make a powerful rebuke of the administration's policy. Drawing on a wealth of existing literature about the factors that impede or compel Congressional activism in use-of-force debates, I find that in both cases, members of Congress faced strong moral, legal, and strategic incentives to act, with few attendant political risks. As such, while the passage of two wars powers resolutions represented an important milestone in interbranch relations, it likely does not presage a new era of Congressional assertiveness in war powers. Keywords: U.S. foreign policy; Donald Trump; Congress [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article "Editorial: 'Turning Point' - also for psychodynamic group psychotherapies?" discusses the effects of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine. It emphasizes that the war represents a "turning point" that affects all areas of society. Russian President Putin is speculated to be a possible initiator of the war due to power obsession and the desire to restore Russia's reputation. The article also addresses various aspects of group psychotherapy, such as the difficulties children and adolescents face in opening up in group therapies, and the significance of the body in psychoanalytic group therapy. It is suggested that group analysts and therapists should be involved in expert committees of the federal government to help with current phenomena of division. [Extracted from the article]

On April 2, 1982, Argentina woke up with the news of the military recovery of Malvinas. The purpose of the article is to make Argentine political and trade union actors visible, addressing them in their position during the development of the initial days of the war, taking into account their capacities and wills as well as their appreciations and particular objectives in the construction of political power. The time frame will be between April 2 - the day of the military recovery of the Malvinas - and April 8 - the day after the swearing-in of General Mario Benjamín Menéndez as Military Governor of the Malvinas Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Prohistoria is the property of Prohistoria Ediciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper focuses on the philosophy of war and, particularly, on Ortega y Gasset's review of Scheler's work, The Genius of War (1915). The scope of this paper is to show that Ortega y Gasset's analysis of Scheler's view on war stems from his initial interest on topics that he will further develop in more mature works, though his review will result in a radical criticism on Scheler. The paper analyses Scheler's view on war and Ortega y Gasset's position in three points: phenomenology of war - where Ortega y Gasset generally agrees with Scheler's meaning of war; ethics of war - where Ortega y Gasset criticizes Scheler because he considered violence as not an essential element of war; metaphysics of war, where Ortega y Gasset makes his criticism even stronger, since Scheler hypostatizes the State and its own rights: this reduces war to the reversal of the power of rights into the rights of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Diablotexto Digital is the property of Diablotexto Digital and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

"Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era" by Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant is a highly original study that explores the role of boy soldiers in the American Civil War. The book examines the debates surrounding underage enlistment and the impact of these young soldiers on society. Divided into three parts, the authors analyze the political and cultural significance of boy soldiers, the changing perceptions of childhood during the war, and the challenges to parental rights and centralized military power. The book sheds light on a previously overlooked aspect of Civil War history and offers valuable insights into the social, political, and legal consequences of wartime debates. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues that Israel's non-assimilationist policy toward Palestinians-what I term Israel's 'rule of difference'-is embedded in the state's security conception. Under the guise of protecting the state and its people, Israel has successfully achieved two essential prongs of this political objective. Dating from the 1948 War, the state has created a series of legal mechanisms that have enabled it to expropriate Palestinian land. Similarly, it has refused to allow Palestinian political associations that espouse nationalist views or challenge the Jewish character of the state to organize or run candidates, even if their programs are clearly non-violent. Ultimately, the state has effectively blocked Palestinians' ability to participate in shaping policy. Ensuring security has thus aided the state in preventing the assimilation of this group into society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his articles, books, and legal memoranda for the U.S. Department of Justice, John Yoo is well known for favoring broad and even exclusive presidential power in the field of national security. Less understood is his dependence on the British model and the prerogatives it extended to the king over external affairs. In his writings, Yoo devotes little attention to the framers' rejection of British executive prerogatives. Even less does he acknowledge their commitment to a republic, a form of government in which sovereign power is vested not in an executive but in the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how countries' incentives to go to war depend on the “political bias” of their pivotal decision makers. This bias is measured by a decision maker's risk/reward ratio from a war compared to that of the country at large. If there is no political bias, then there are mutually acceptable transfers from one country to the other that will avoid a war in the presence of commitment or enforceability of peace treaties. There are cases with a strong enough bias on the part of one or both countries where war cannot be prevented by any transfer payments. Our results shed some new light on the uneven contender paradox and the interpretation of the “democratic peace.” We examine countries' choices of the bias of their leaders and show that when transfers are possible, at least one country will choose a biased leader, as that leads to a strong bargaining position and extraction of transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent are political leaders entitled to violate embedded moral and legal rules in response to national emergencies? Do they have a duty to do so? This article assesses two prominent liberal approaches to this question. The ‘dirty hands’ thesis insists that there is a radical separation between private and public ethics and that the latter may require the commission of acts prohibited by the former. A ‘lesser evil’ approach holds that leaders may even violate the more permissive public ethics if there is a consequentialist case for doing so. Both suggest to some extent that certain acts remain wrong but may be necessary nonetheless. While this position makes good philosophical sense, it makes little political sense. In practice, societies choose either to validate or reject the legitimacy of certain acts. This article aims to overcome this problem by suggesting a new way of thinking about the way that ‘dirty hands’ and ‘lesser evil’ ethics work in practice through Ian Clark's work on legitimacy. It argues that in particular cases actors evaluate between competing political, ethical and legal claims, a point illustrated by a brief case study on the torture debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To supervise its international neutrality commitments during the First World War, the Dutch government invoked the emergency powers of the 1899 War Law, imposing a 'state of war' or 'siege' in 75% of the country's municipalities, which subsequently witnessed extraordinary military interference in their daily affairs. Implementing the War Law proved confusing, controversial and complex. To impose uniformity, the government and judiciary repeatedly limited its application, ultimately altering the legislation's 'need breaks law' justification. That the War Law was used for a protracted length of time illustrated that, even though neutral, the Netherlands remained a nation in fear of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the Vietnam War to the present, there has been a growing impression that federal courts lack both the jurisdiction and the competence to decide war power disputes. Such a cramped view finds no support in the first century and a half, when courts regularly accepted and decided such cases. It was only with Vietnam that courts began to avoid the merits of war power cases by invoking a variety of threshold tests. Following 9/11, the broad and expansive justifications of unilateral presidential powers by the Bush administration forced federal courts to revisit and reassert their constitutional responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the war between Russia and Chechnia. Main motive for war on both sides; Origins of conflict in the conspiracy of one of the major networks within the chaotic mode of domination or power; Possible structural relation between the chaotic mode of domination, conspiracy and spectacular forms of politics.