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This paper explores the implications of the militarisation of Australian history and the dilemmas of increasing public support for same-sex marriage in Australia at a time of renewed assaults on Indigenous rights, austerity measures and the silencing of dissent. The paper analyses the celebratory rhetoric which increasingly typifies both marriage equality campaigns and the commemoration of Australia’s First World War or ‘Anzac’ history in popular media and public debate. Against the confluence between ongoing debates on same-sex marriage and the ‘Anzac myth’, I highlight four key challenges: the silencing of dissent; forgetting of the Frontier Wars; untold stories of civil society achievements; and the normalising of same-sex rights. I argue that professed support for a liberal version of ‘gay rights’ exemplified by same-sex marriage, set against a militarized version of Australian history, glosses over past and ongoing injustices. A militarized version of history underpins a nationalism that misrepresents credit for advances in rights recognition, sidelining public representations of Indigenous sovereignties and the contributions of civil society, protest and social justice campaigning to the recognition and maintenance of civil and political rights. As a result, the transformative claims of Land Rights and Treaty, critiques of war, and queer politics, are contained. Este artículo explora las implicaciones de la militarización de la historia de Australia y los dilemas del creciente apoyo público al matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo en Australia, en una época de ataques renovados a los derechos de los indígenas, medidas de austeridad y silenciamiento de las discrepancias. El artículo analiza la retórica de celebración en los medios populares y el debate público que cada vez más acompaña tanto las campañas de igualdad matrimonial como la conmemoración de la historia de Australia en la primera guerra mundial o “Anzac”. En contra de la confluencia entre los debates que se están desarrollando sobre el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo y el “mito Anzac”, se destacan cuatro retos clave: el silenciamiento de las discrepancias, el olvido de las Guerras de Frontera; las historias no contadas sobre los logros de la sociedad civil; y la normalización de los derechos de las parejas del mismo sexo. Se defiende que el supuesto apoyo a una versión liberal de los “derechos homosexuales” ejemplificado por el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo, contrapuesto con una versión militarizada de la historia de Australia, encubre injusticias pasadas y actuales. Una versión militarizada de la historia respalda un nacionalismo que tergiversa el crédito para avanzar en el reconocimiento de derechos, marginando las representaciones públicas de la soberanía de los indígenas y las contribuciones de la sociedad civil, las protestas y campañas de protesta en favor de la justicia social para que se reconozcan y mantengan los derechos civiles y políticos. De esta forma se frenan las demandas transformadoras de los derechos y tratados de tierra, las críticas a la guerra y las políticas queer. DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2724515

Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark is Associate Professor of International Law and Director of the Åland Islands Peace Institute. She has had the pleasure of heading the research project discussed in the present article. Many thanks go to all researchers involved in it over the years, namely Timo Koivurova, Pirjo Kleemola-Juntunen, Saila Heinikoski, Filip Holiencin and Yannick Poullie for all their hard work, support, and for fruitful and pleasant cooperation. Our discussions have been enriched by the generous input and wise questions of the Scientific Advisors of the project: Lauri Hannikainen, professor emeritus; Allan Rosas, Professor, Judge at the EU Court of Justice; Gregory Simons, associate professor/docent, Uppsala Center for Russian Studies; Kenneth Gustavsson, associate professor/docent, Åland museum; Said Mahmoudi, professor emeritus; Päivi Kaukoranta, Director General Legal Affairs and ambassador, Finnish MFA; Matthieu Chillaud, PhD, France/Estonia; Geir Ulfstein, Professor, University of Oslo, Norway; Willy Østreng, professor emeritus, director, former vice-president of the Norwegian Academy for Polar Research. Alison Bailes, guest professor and ambassador (UK) was a member of the advisory board until spring 2016.

The 2018 Make America Secure Appropriations Act is the latest United States federal policy which prioritises funds for defence projects at the expense of climate change adaption planning in the Marianas Archipelago. Since 2006, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has released six Environmental Impact Statement documents which outline construction of bombing ranges on the islands of Guam, Pågan, and Tinian. Expanding militarisation of the archipelago is supported by US-owned media through the narrative of pro-American ideologies which frames any resistance as unpatriotic. However, both non-voting US Congress representatives for Guam and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) express concerns with how federal funds are prioritised for military projects instead of climate change adaption. Further, Indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwasch peoples of the Marianas continue to resist by creating content on alternative digital media platforms and through lawsuits supported by the National Environmental Protection Act against the DoD and Department of the Navy. This article illustrates how remaining as insular areas of the US directly dictates the lack of sovereignty the people of the Marianas have in planning for climate change.

This paper is addressed to academics, conservation agencies and governments primarily in developing countries, faced with the need to protect species from poaching by global syndicates or local groups that threaten the survival of species. The argument of this paper is that while military intervention may provide short to medium terms gains, these have to be weighed against the likely medium to long term financial and socio-economic costs of military activity on people, including the military themselves, and conservation. These costs are likely to be significant and may even threaten the sustainability of conservation areas. While the analysis is developed in relation to the military intervention to inhibit rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, the literature review reveals that similar challenges occur internationally and the South African case study may be applicable to a wide range of anti-poaching conservation efforts and military options throughout the developing world. A multi-pronged approach, where all components are strongly implemented, is necessary to combat poaching.

The 2018 Make America Secure Appropriations Act is the latest United States federal policy which prioritises funds for defence projects at the expense of climate change adaptation planning in the Marianas Archipelago. Since 2006, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has released six Environmental Impact Statement documents which outline construction of bombing ranges on the islands of Guam, Pagan and Tinian. Expanding militarisation of the archipelago is supported by US-owned media through the narrative of pro-American ideologies which frames any resistance as unpatriotic. However, both non-voting US Congress representatives for Guam and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) express concerns with how federal funds are prioritised for military projects instead of climate change adaptation. Further, Indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwasch peoples of the Marianas continue to resist by creating content on alternative digital media platforms and through lawsuits supported by the National Environmental Protection Act against the DoD and Department of the Navy. This article illustrates how remaining as insular areas of the US directly dictates the lack of sovereignty the people of the Marianas have in planning for climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public space is increasingly recognised to be central to spatial discourse of cities. A city’s urbanism is displayed in public spaces, representing a myriad of complex socio-cultural, economic and democratic practices of everyday life. In cities of the Global South, especially those with nascent democracies, different values attached to a space by various actors – both material and symbolic – frame the contestation, making the physical space a normative instrument for contestation. Tundikhel, once believed to be the largest open space in Asia, is an important part of Kathmandu’s urbanism, which has witnessed two civil wars popularly known as Jana Andolans, and the subsequent political upheavals, to emerge as the symbolic meeting point of the city, democracy, and its people. The paper argues that the confluence of the three modalities of power – institutionalisation, militarisation and informalisation – has underpinned its historical transformation, resulting in what I call ‘urban rupturing’: a process of (un)making of public space, through physical and symbolic fragmentation and spatial estrangement. The paper contends that unlike the common notion that public spaces such as Tundikhel are quintessentially public, hypocrisy is inherent to the ‘publicness’ agenda of the state and the institutional machinery in Kathmandu. It is an urban condition that not only maligns the public space agenda but also creeps into other spheres of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone illustrates the ways in which the security/development discourse that has emerged over the past two decades remains embedded in theoretical assumptions that have been shaped by a blend of realist and neoliberal theories. As we will show, the logical outcome of this orthodox security/development discourse is that it leads to a militarisation of what is in reality a complex social problem. The neoliberal policies adopted by governments in Sierra Leone has served to heighten these social problems and in so doing have created the conditions for the generation of the Ebola virus to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from precolonial to colonial rule at the end of the nineteenth century, the 1959-61 revolution followed by independence in 1962, and the 1994 genocide followed by the RPF’s military victory are defining moments of modern Rwandan history. Each of these periods was a major break with the previous one. However, there are also striking continuities throughout the entire history spanning the precolonial to the post-genocide eras. Continuities include the concentration of power, intra-regime conflict, the salience of ethnicity, and the nature of the state. Discontinuities can be seen mainly in the role of the army as an institution and a source of values, and the role played by and the use made of ethnicity. A very distinctive feature is the re-emergence of militarisation in 1994 after a century-long break, thus reconnecting with the precolonial period. This longue durée view allows us to better understand the defining features of governance in present-day Rwanda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterioration of the security climate in Eastern Europe is likely to validate the hypothesis of reopening the rites of succession at the end of the Cold War. The proliferation of hybrid conflicts and the birth of a new type of asymmetrical threat can be thus correlated with a process of militarisation of globalisation. The article assumes that the main feature of hybrid threats from the most recent history refers to the rising influence of non-state actors and only in the alternative to the emergence of new formulas of power projection, based on non-military or subversive means. The study proposes a brief look at the security landscape in the area of the two major blocs - NATO and the Russia Federation, in relation to the phenomenon of hybrid conflicts. An approach from the angle of geopolitical theory may prove itself to be useful both from the perspective of the ability to identify the main tendencies of evolution and through the possibility to integrate them in the wide logic of processes regarding arms and militarisation of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Never before the nineteenth century had Europeans, especially in the south, adopted cordons sanitaires in such great numbers or at such a fast rate. This article aims to analyse the process of the rationalisation and militarisation of the cordons sanitaires imposed in the fight against epidemics during the nineteenth century on the Mediterranean island of Majorca (Spain). These cordons should be understood as a declaration of war by the authorities on emerging epidemics. Epidemics could generate sudden and intolerably high rises in mortality that the new liberal citizenship found unacceptable. Toleration of this type of measure was the result of a general consensus, with hardly any opposition, which not only obtained the support of scientists (especially in the field of medicine) but also of most of the local and provincial political elite, and even of the population at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores 'peace days' in English schools as a form of peace education. From a historical overview of academic discussions on peace education in the US and Great Britain since the First World War, we identify three key factors important for peace education: the political context, the place in which peace days occur and pedagogical imperatives of providing a certain narrative of the sources of violence in politics. Although contemporary militarism and neoliberalism reduce the terrains for peace studies in English schools, peace days allow teachers to carve out spaces for peace education. Peace days in Benfield School, Newcastle and Comberton Village College, Cambridgeshire, are considered as case studies. We conclude with reflections on the opportunities and limitations of this approach to peace education, and on how peace educators and activists could enlarge its reach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article surveys four decades of work on peace, security, and development, centring on articles published in previous issues of the IDS Bulletin. These articles focused initially on disarmament and its actual and potential contributions to development. After the end of the Cold War, development research engaged more and more directly with conflict prevention and peace-building, turning the spotlight upon security. IDS work has been distinctive in three respects. First, in interrogating the multiple meanings of security, delinking it from state and international security. Second, by tracing the complex links between global, national, local, and personal security. Third, in its insistence that security be inclusive, drawing upon the experience and agency of the people and groups who are 'developed' and 'secured'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the migration crisis of 2015-2016, the management of mass migration and border control became militarised in Central Europe, and this process has also reshaped the dynamics of multinational defence cooperation in the region. Accordingly, while the so-called Central European Defence Cooperation (CEDC) was created by Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia in 2010 to support NATO and EU capability development projects via defence cooperation, after the migration crisis it became the major Central European forum for military cooperation against irregular mass migration. Although many defence officials in the region are not necessarily enthusiastic about this development, the Central European political environment and also practical defence considerations pushed the defence ministries of CEDC countries towards deeper cooperation on border control, as well as better coordination with ministries of interior affairs on the national and the regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Autrepart is the property of Presses de Sciences Po 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 growing militarisation of nature conservation has refocused attention on the relations between counterinsurgency and conservation. This contribution analyses how these two phenomena entwine in the Virunga National Park, located in the warridden east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It examines how this entwinement relates to dynamics of conflict and violence, and how these dynamics shape and are shaped by the livelihood and resistance practices of local inhabitants. As it shows, a particularly important form of resistance is 'guerrilla livelihood' activities, or cultivation, (prohibited) fishing and logging within the boundaries of the park, which often take place under the protection of armed groups. By studying the interplay among such unauthorised exploitation of natural resources, different types of conflict, and insurgent mobilisation, it is demonstrated that strict law enforcement and joint operations of the Congolese army and park guards fuel, rather than mitigate, the dynamics feeding into armed mobilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on environmental history and political ecology, this paper contributes to growing debates concerning military-environment encounters and conservation militarisation/securitisation by investigating the complex histories and legacies of these relations. Grounding my insights in South Africa's iconic Kruger National Park, I chart how encounters between environment and military/security activity over the last century offer a repeatedly contradictory picture: military activity, skills, and weapons have harmed wildlife and hence reinforced the need for its protection, and they have simultaneously been deployed in the name of such protection. Furthermore, some of these historical engagements failed to materialise as planned and, as such, provide insight into military-environment frictions as well as nature's ability to thwart militarised interventions. Yet other engagements thrived and resulted in the multi-layered militarisation of Kruger, as both protected area and strategic borderland. Several of these encounters have lived on to shape Kruger's current intensive militarisation tied to rhino poaching, both the state response and poaching itself. Past military activity, in fact, provides an arsenal of enabling factors for current poaching- and conservation-related militarised violence that ultimately proves harmful to conservation efforts.

Since the onset of E-sports we have seen the development from casual players to professional players who push the boundary of game mastery to new heights via coordinated team play. In this short paper I explore how a group of video game players adopt military-style communication methods and strategies to coordinate their actions in the popular tactical First Person Shooter (FPS) video game DayZ (Bohemia Interactive, 2014). Utilising the key components of team interaction in the context of distributed and ad-hoc military teams (Pascual et al., 1997), I show how a group of players evolved their interactions from team play to squad play. I argue that squad play is an advancement of the strategic and tactical thinking embodied in team play through the adoption of real-world military interaction and communication strategies.

This article reconstructs the biography of Lorenzo Barcala, a pardo born at the end of the XVIII century in Mendoza (in the capital context of the province of Cuyo), who played an important role in the non-white participation in civic and and other armed forces of the city between 1814 and 1835. Through Barcala's case, it is possible to explore the social mobility of soldiers of African origin incorporated into military forces during the war of Independence and the civil wars of the current Argentine Republic, based on the hypothesis that their participation favored integration and social ascent. In this context, historiographic research interpellates and establishes relations between heterogeneous documental sources, that allow for the reconstruction of biographical events and their qualitative analysis, which focus on the agent and his practices, attempting to situate the trajectory of Barcala within the social history of the negro population in Mendoza. In favor of this idea, the biographical resource employed reveals Barcala's strategies of manumission and family coniguration, evaluates the incidence of the prest in the access to property, and analyzes the extent of social relations and prestige in the economic commitments of the coronel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we develop and expand the rebel-to-ruler literature to go beyond ‘rebel transformations’, in order to examine the transformation and militarisation of the entire post-genocide society in Rwanda. Through a historical and socio-political analysis of the military’s influence in post-genocide Rwanda, we argue that the adoption of military norms and ethos, drawn from an idealised and reconstructed pre-colonial history rather than simply an insurgent past, motivates the military’s centrality and penetration of all society’s sectors, economically, politically and socially, with the ultimate aim of retaining power in the hands of the rebels turned rulers. As such, the case demonstrates the need for an expansion of the rebel-to-ruler literature (1) beyond its concern with parties and regime type to a broader palette of governance effects and (2) beyond its singular focus on insurgent past and towards a longue-durée understanding of complementary causes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Foro Internacional is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC 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.)

Since 2006's bilateral US-Japan pact, the island of Guåhan (Guam) has been anticipating an unprecedented buildup of US military and civilian personnel, and a commensurate increase in anti-militarisation and decolonisation activism. This essay reviews the local resistance to the buildup, and examines how the literary strategies of Chamoru poet Craig Santos Perez aim to expand the work of local activism. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's theorisation of political speech in the public sphere and on Arturo Escobar's extension of that public space into "public cyberspheres," I argue that [guma'], the most recent volume of Perez's three-book project from unincorporated territory, extends the public space of appearance of Guåhan's anti-buildup activism to include the electronic space of online social media. By incorporating the speech emerging from that virtual community into poems, Perez structures and concretises what would otherwise be ephemeral, and invites new readers far from the island of Guåhan into the stakeholding community. Perez's poetic strategies illustrate the way literature can serve as a nexus of activism, charting a way to resist militarisation in Guåhan and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2004, media and public opinion in Assam (India) have focused on increasing instances of poaching of rhinoceros for their horns and presence of Bengali-speaking Muslim peasants, especially in and around the iconic Kaziranga National Park. From hastily made digital films, to anti-poaching motifs at Durga Puja pandals, the plight of the rhinoceros has occupied an important position in an acrimonious political discourse on Assamese culture. The innocence and dignity attributed to the animal stands in marked contrast to the lack of discussion on the large numbers of young men who have been killed in anti-poaching campaigns by the state. This article looks at the interstices of class, culture and commerce in an attempt to understand the popular deification of the rhinoceros and implications of the developmental discourse that seeks to put people and rhino in their 'rightful' place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coercive character of protest policing is a tangible problem in Turkey. Since the resurgence of contentious politics from the late 1980s, major issues in protest policing have been officially recognised, and eventually addressed by public authorities with an agenda of reform. However, the excessive use of force by the police, even in the face of predominantly peaceful protests, lingered on well into the past decade, leaving behind dozens of dead citizens and thousands injured. In this article, I consult two main concepts,militarisationandpolice knowledge, to understand the institutional factors that underpin the repressive policing practices in Turkey. Among the different aspects of militarisation, I am particularly interested in the proliferation and adoption of less-lethal weapons in the strategies of protest control, while by police knowledge, I largely refer to the role of crowd theory in shaping the mind-set of the police and their behaviour on the street. Drawing on the theoretical debates in the literature and a variety of empirical sources, I argue that the growing reliance on less-lethal weapons, on the one hand, and police knowledge conditioned by classical crowd theory, on the other, encourage, if not propel, coercive styles of policing at public protests in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks what militarisation looks like when encountered in university settings, using the example of the UK university armed service units. It identifies a specific definition of militarisation, which is then used as a framework to explore the USUs. The USUs have been subject to critique as emblematic of militarisation, and thus problematic. The paper looks at practices where militarisation can be identified as evident on university campuses, such as in disciplinary engagements with military institutions and activities, as well as flows of funding and knowledge. We show how the military-university nexus problematizes the idea of separate and distinctive military and civilian spheres which pervades much of the discourse around military involvement at universities, and highlight the generative and creative capabilities of militarisation as co-constituted within the military-university nexus. The paper then examines in detail how the process of militarisation works in practice through the USUs. This confirms the importance of individual agency to a conceptualisation of militarisation. In conclusion, we argue for the continued utility of process-focussed understandings of militarisation which emphasise how such processes are generative of social relations. We emphasise the necessity of capturing the nuance and complexity through which processes work not least around the engagements of people as active agents with such processes. We also note the potential significance of scale to future conceptualisations of militarisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acapulco epitomises the (in)security of urban zones in the Americas whose geographical, political and economic divisions are exacerbated by the political economy and geopolitics of drug trafficking, as well as by militarised attempts to fight it. Various geographic, political, and economic factors in the Acapulco Metropolitan Zone (AMZ) have impacted drug trafficking and organised crime and contributed to high levels of violence. As a result, Acapulco now ranks among the 50 most violent cities in the world. This article analyses the trends in drug trafficking and organised crime in the AMZ, and highlights the lessons for scholars and policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyse the increasing militarisation of public space in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, particularly on the eve of the 2016 Olympics. To this end, I briefly discuss how the concept of militarisation has been historically approached in the International Relations literature, namely within the security field. In the first section, I address the nature of the domestic security challenges Brazil faces as a developing country. In the second section, I show that the public security challenge of organised crime in Rio was securitised and confronted by increasing militarisation over the years as a result of a specific model of neo-liberal social control carried out by the country. I then analyse Brazil's Olympics security scheme carried out in order to portray Rio as a safe city to the world. In the last section, I highlight the contradictions between accounts on the collapse in domestic security vis-à-vis official government statements to the international media to assure that ‘nothing would go wrong' during the mega sports event. The idea is to show how the militarisation of public security, rather than mere governmental efforts to signal stability to the international community during the Olympics, is a trend likely to outlast the event that implies not only, but mainly, the perpetuation of insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To ‘save’ the Virunga National Park, located in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the European Commission (EC) allocates development aid to the paramilitary training of the park guards, their salaries, and mixed patrols of the guards together with the Congolese army. Moreover, the ‘development’ projects the EC supports around the park have militarising effects as they are based on a soft counter-insurgency approach to conservation and to address dynamics of violent conflict. This amounts to the ‘green militarisation’ of development aid. This article describes how a personalised network of policymakers within the EC renders militarised conservation-related violence and controversy around the Virunga park invisible, by framing contestations and violence in and around the park as solely caused by economic factors and motivations. Moreover, by ‘hiding’ the fact that the EC aid is used to fund armed conservation practices, policymakers circumvent political debate about the use of development funds for (para)military expenditures. While the existing literature focuses on the importance of securitised discourses to explain the militarisation of conservation, this article indicates that in addition, it is important to focus on these more mundane practices of securitisation within international organisations that ultimately fund the militarisation of conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The "Yellowstone Model" of exclusionary, or fortress conservation, has spread widely across the globe since 1872. While in many other countries there has been a concomitant ever-increasing militarisation of park guards, the history of the United States (US) Park Ranger offers an alternative narrative. This paper traces the complex history of the US Park ranger through time to show how the Ranger as an outward embodiment of state power has been contradicted by administrative and practical logics directing rangers to educate, welcome, and guide park visitors. Rangers' work as territorial enforcers, and as strong-arms of the state has been tempered and defined by multiple disciplining forces over time. Using a political ecology approach, this paper examines how shifting political economic contexts, shifts in park use and park visitors, and a changing national law enforcement milieu influenced how and in what ways National Park Rangers have performed law enforcement in US parks over the past 100 years. The paper concludes by laying out why comparisons between US National Park Rangers and park guards in other parts of the world may be troubled by a number of socioeconomic and political factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution draws together comments made by the author to several recent conferences on the era of `high' apartheid in South Africa. It addresses the rise of the anti-movement in Europe and elsewhere, arguing that anti-apartheid should be seen not only as a transnational movement but also as a series of discrete local struggles with distinctly national features. Specifically, it argues that ‘anti-apartheid’ bore different connotations in Britain, Western Europe, north America and Eastern Europe during the Cold War. In drawing attention to the power of language, the article suggests the need to distinguish between ‘anti-apartheid’, ‘pro-apartheid’ and ‘anti-anti-apartheid’. The article also highlights some of the exceptional features of high apartheid as an ideology of modernisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-Arab Spring context created a window of opportunity for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to reposition themselves in the region as countries capable of using not only money and diplomacy, but also military means in pursuing their regional policies. Their military interventions in Bahrain in 2011 and Yemen in 2015 uncover different aspects of the militarisation of their foreign policies. The permanence of the militarisation of their policies is, however, challenged by the type of interventionist state unfolding from these muscular policies, their domestic and regional legitimacy and the institutionalisation of this foreign policy pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the US has caused much international consternation and anxiety. Reactions have been based on distrust and rejection of Trump’s political ideology, behavioural disposition and unpredictable policy positions. His campaign speeches were filled with provocative utterances which were racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-environment and self-centred. This article examines some possible impacts of Trump’s presidency on the Pacific island countries (PICs). The first issue refers to how Trump’s proposed isolationist and militarisation policies may affect regional geopolitics. The two policies tend to contradict each other because while isolationism means pulling back on US economic and strategic presence in the Pacific, a reversal of the pivot to Asia-Pacific policy, militarisation implies greater strategic reach, regionally and globally. What does this seemingly contradictory approach mean for the PICs? Second, the article looks at the impact of Trump’s climate change denial stance and the responses by PICs, given the fact that climate change is the single most significant foreign policy and development initiative of the PICs since their independence. The third issue deals with the potential impact of Trump’s restrictive migration policies on remittance flow to the PICs and how these affect the small island economies and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the beginning of the 1980s, a new Global Space for the expansion of transnational capital emerged in the US--México border states. The militarization and securitization of that border were justified by government policies aimed at stopping irregular immigration, drug traffic, and terrorism. In 1991 the US Congress approved the creation of a new Defense Industrial and Technology Base (DITB), which would benefit the Gun Belt linked to the military-industrial complex, and in 1992 the Department of Defense (DoD) proposed to establish a Defense Reserve Industrial Base Program (DRIB), the location for which would be within the existing production-sharing centers along the US--México border. Both, the DITB and the DRIB, would take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and transnational corporations established or expanded their facilities in the Global Space that has been created along the México--US border. This article examines this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In September, 2014, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) called for militarised assistance in response to the rapidly escalating West Africa Ebola Epidemic. Soon after, the United Kingdom deployed its military to Sierra Leone, which (among other contributions) helped to support the establishment of novel and military-led Ebola Virus Disease (Ebola) response centres throughout the country. To examine these civil-military structures and their effects, 110 semi-structured interviews with civilian and military Ebola Response Workers (ERWs) were conducted and analysed using neo-Durkheimian theory., Results: The hierarchical Ebola response centres were found to be spaces of 'conflict attenuation' for their use of 'rule-bound niches', 'neutral zones', 'co-dependence', and 'hybridity', thereby not only easing civil-military relationships (CMRel), but also increasing the efficiency of their application to Ebola response interventions. Furthermore, the hierarchical response centres were also found to be inclusive spaces that further increased efficiency through the decentralisation and localisation of these interventions and daily decision making, albeit for mostly privileged groups and in limited ways., Conclusions: This demonstrates how hierarchy and localisation can (and perhaps should) go hand-in-hand during future public health emergency responses as a strategy for more robustly including typically marginalised local actors, while also improving necessary efficiency-in other words, an 'inclusive hierarchical coordination' that is both operationally viable and an ethical imperative., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

The 2013-2016 West Africa Ebola Epidemic is the largest outbreak of Ebola in history. By September, 2014 the outbreak was worsening significantly, and the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières called for military assistance. In Sierra Leone, the British and Sierra Leonean militaries intervened. They quickly established a National Ebola Response Centre and a constituent network of District Ebola Response Centres. Thereafter, these inherently militarised centres are where almost all Ebola response activities were coordinated. In order to examine perspectives on the nature of the militaries' intervention, 110 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted and analysed. Military support to Sierra Leone's Ebola response was felt by most respondents to be a valuable contribution to the overall effort to contain the outbreak, especially in light of the perceived weakness of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to effectively do so. However, a smaller number of respondents emphasised that the military deployments facilitated various structural harms, including for how the perceived exclusion of public institutions (as above) and other local actors from Ebola response decision making was felt to prevent capacity building, and in turn, to limit resilience to future crises. The concurrent provision of life-saving assistance and rendering of structural harm resulting from the militaries' intervention is ultimately found to be part of a vicious cycle, which this article conceptualises as the 'political economy of expedience', a paradox that should be considered inherent in any militarised intervention during humanitarian and public health crises., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

This article will review the Åland Islands in the European and Finnish security context. The Åland Islands is a demilitarised, neutralised and autonomous province of Finland, and the aim of the article is to look at how the more than 160-year old demilitarisation regime relates to the current security context. The time period to be examined is limited to the 21st century, encompassing deeper security cooperation of the European Union and debates on Finnish foreign policy in the European context as a non-NATO country. A major theme of the discussion is to look at the militarisation trends in Europe and how that might affect Finland and the Åland Islands. The article also touches upon topical issues such as Brexit, advancement of European security cooperation and Finnish NATO debates. It examines the demands for change concerning the status of the Åland Islands as well as how security is approached from the Ålandic perspective. Moreover, the issue of what could happen if Finland would join the NATO is discussed. The article concludes that the status appears to have very stable role stipulated in international law, despite securitising and militarising trends in the surrounding region. Indeed, a multilateral solution such as demilitarisation serves as a contrast to the regionalisation operating on military logic.