RelationsInternational

global politics, relationally

9 Apr 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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A Stranger in a (Not So) Strange Land

I have had the privilege to spend today at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. I was invited by Phil Steinberg on behalf of the journal Political Geography to comment on a plenary address by Rachel Pain on intimate warfare. On the one hand, walking into AAG looks a lot like walking into ISA: there is a heavy book that describes the panels that are going on, a busy book room, and a number of fascinating and diverse panels. On the other hand, my initial experience with AAG was very different than my experience at ISA: here, I know very few people, and even fewer people know me; at ISA, I have trouble walking five feet without running into friends and colleagues who I’ve missed over the years. Also, here, I am the ‘non-geographer,’ as I imagine the ‘non-political-scientist’ feels at APSA or something – a guest in a particularized world.

I spent my first few hours wandering around the conference feeling lost – I could go to panels, and listen to things I hadn’t heard before, and see books that I don’t know exist, have not heard of, and have not read. I started listening to the goings-on with fascination.

The more I listened, though, the more I figured out that this is not actually a land as I originally thought that it was – instead, there are a lot of commonalities between the discussions here and the discussions at ISA – far beyond what the conference looks like and how it is structured.

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5 Apr 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Conference Tweeting

This is a post by Jenny Lobasz. Security Issues at RelationsInternational have made the author byline incorrect Sorry for the inconvenience.

last isa tweet

This may come as a surprise to those who followed my flurry of ISA 2014 tweets, but I actually spend very little time on Twitter. In the “real world,” (for ISA feels, at least, as though it takes place in another dimension), I’m more likely to be found on Facebook or the select blog. Twitter, however, seems tailor-made for conferences and other special events, and so I figured that my inaugural Relations International post might as well highlight a handful of resources for the verbose conference tweeter:

One final tip: not only should tweeters (tweeps?) use the conference hashtag (e.g. #isa2014), you should also use session hashtags (e.g. #sd04) to make it easy for people to follow specific conversations.

4 Apr 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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The Carnage of Carnage (at Fort Hood)

At Fort Hood yesterday, four people died and many more were injured in a shooting spree by active duty soldier Ivan Lopez. This is the third shooting on a US military base in seven months, and comes just a few years after an even more gruesome shooting spree at Fort Hood.  The dozens of people who have died in these mass murders have names, identities, and families – most of them are also active duty military.

These victims have names, identities, and families like the tens of thousands of civilian victims of the “war on terror” that the US military is “fighting” abroad; or the tens of thousands of victims of Cold War proxy wars, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Gulf War, and the like.

It is not only their humanity that these victims have in common – it is that they are victims not only of the perpetrators of the crimes or wars that kill them, but of militarism itself.

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27 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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The Gender Imbalance of Concern about Gender Imbalance in IR

This morning, the Committee on the Status of Women and the Committee on the Status of Representation and Diversity co-hosted a panel on the gender gap in IR citation practices. The panel was organized in response to the collection and publication of data about the underrepresentation of women in citation practices even compared to their publication rates, both to discuss that data and discuss strategies to address the problem. Members of the editorial teams of International Studies Review, International Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Peace Research were in the room to talk about it. Dan Nexon, lead editor of the flagship journal in the field, talked about strategies for increasing representation of women in the journal and in citations.

As they had that conversation, five people listened. All five of them were women.

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19 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Russian Foreign Policy Interests in Ukraine

This is a guest post by Zachary Selden, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida and former Deputy Secretary General for Policy at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

There is a lot of commentary out there on Ukraine right now, but there is not a lot being said about Russian foreign policy interests.  From 2003-2011, I spend a lot of time in the NATO world dealing with Russian diplomats and politicians.  I remember sitting across the table from Deputy PM Dimitry Rogozin back when he was the Russian ambassador to NATO.  I remember all too many meetings with Russian Duma members where they played out conspiracy theories that would make a 9-11 Truthers meeting look thoughtful and balanced.  I’m no Russia expert, but I think I have some insight.

First, what do they really want?  Its pretty simple: Russia wants to politically and economically control the “near abroad” and weaken any potential competitor for influence in the region.   No secret there. Against that scorecard, they are doing well at the moment.  Even if Russia does nothing more in Ukraine’s east, they have effectively blocked Ukraine from closer association with the EU and NATO.  Why?  Because neither NATO nor the EU is going to take in a state with territorial disputes.  If you want to make an EU official break out in hives, just whisper “Cyprus” in his ear and watch the itching begin.  Russia’s actions in Georgia effectively block them from joining NATO, so the strategy  works.   Russia now effectively holds a trump card over any western-oriented Ukrainian government that wants to move closer toward western institutions.

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19 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Drugged to Kill?

A militant group is considering a move from drugging to electroshock therapy to promote awareness and functionality in its spies and its killers. For more than half of the organization’s history, it has been using stimulants to provide its militants with the alertness and motivation to fight. The stimulants are in the food, in chewing gum, in drinks, often without the knowledge of the militants consuming them. These stimulants have been a key part of motivating the militants to work, fight, and kill, but the leaders of the group are concerned that it is not enough – and other drugs aren’t working as well as they had hoped. They have been exploring more radical programs of DNA-based injection and now shocks to the brain.

The leaders describe the shock program as “non-invasive” but “complicated” especially in terms of knowing “what to turn on and what to turn off.”  A Harvard Medical School professor suggested that the shock process “seemed to work” to increase awareness and motivation among militants even though there is “almost no data” about long term effects. Concerned with “performance issues,” the militant organization continues to drug its militants, and is working on the sustainability of the shock program.

That militant organization is the US military.

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14 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Maybe We’ve Gotten it Wrong About Democracy…

In the Jakarta Post’s January 2014 “Outlook” section, the deputy defense minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin argued that threats to the state are no longer solely military, but rather Indonesian’s good citizens should be alert to threats to the state’s ideology, economy and culture. Indonesian military commander Gen. Moeldoko argued in a speech in February that the greatest threat to Indonesia is neoliberalism, particularly the domination of foreign corporations.

These are not unfamiliar arguments, particularly in Southeast Asia, where “ideology and culture” are sacrosanct. In Thailand, the tripartite state ideology is “Religion, King, Thainess.” In Indonesia the basis of democracy is Pancasila, the five principles—belief in one God, just and civilized humanity, unity of the State, democracy through consensus, and social justice. These are lofty goals, to be sure, but the students in my Democracy and Human Rights class at Universitas Andalas in West Sumatra, Indonesia, tell me that these are attainable goals, and could be met if only they could be left alone, without the expectations of Western powers and interference in “Indonesian” democracy.

Watching the events unfold in Ukraine, Thailand and Venezuela from the vantage point of my Indonesian students has been enlightening.

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14 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Ghosts of ISAs Past and Future

As I work on my last (of way too many) presentations for ISA 2014, I can’t help but remember my first two ISAs. The first was in Portland, Oregon in 2003 – I went to the conference to see what it was like, without applying to present. The second was in Montreal in 2004 – my first international conference presentation. In Portland, I went to dozens of panels. I listened to them, engaged and interested, and asked questions that provoked discussions and helped me make network connections that jump-started and have lasted throughout my career. In Montreal, I wrote and fully memorized a fifteen-minute presentation (which I gave standing, choreographed with expressions and movements) on a paper on feminist methodologies that I never even ended up trying to publish. I was on a panel with a number of storied names in the field, who I watched with awe, and felt flattered just to know. As I remember those two ISA conferences, I remember them as full of energy – intellectual inspiration, social connections, excitement at meeting people whose work I admired, and a sense that something really interesting was happening, and I was getting to watch.

I contrast that with my experience at ISA 2011 in Montreal again. While I was in the same hotel with the same bustle and probably more intellectual energy, I greeted that conference with something different than the excitement that I had seven years earlier. There were a lot of critiques of my ‘disinterested’ behavior at ISA 2011 – a radical change for a lot of reasons. First, of course, people knew who I was in order to wonder about my level of interest. Second, I suppose, I knew enough people that those criticisms got back to me. But other than that, and more important than that – it was true, I was behaving in a disinterested way. I single out ISA 2011 because it changed my thinking about ISAs, and taught me a lesson that I figure might be worth sharing as we approach another ISA.

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12 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
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Disturbing the Comfortable

This morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education included a piece called “Dark Thoughts,” which discussed the reasons why mental illness is on the rise in academia – in response to a Guardian blog post about a culture of acceptance of mental health issues in the profession. The original post talked openly about mental health issues PhD students suffer, and the unique, isolating situation of (increasingly competitive) PhD programs and junior faculty positions. It used examples of suicides among academics struggling with those issues. The response suggested that there are a number of pressures on not only graduate students but academics generally that are increasing in recent years. Amanda Murdie’s recent (very thoughtful) piece at the Duck of Minerva served as an excellent reminder of the importance of mental health for academics, both generally and as it is linked to productivity.

As I read this very important discussion, I still saw something missing. I kept remembering the feminist understanding that the personal is political and its inverse that the political is personal. I think that it is important to relate that observation to the discussion of mental health in academia. There are a lot of ways in this field that the personal is academic and the academic is personal.

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6 Mar 2014
by Laura Sjoberg
2 Comments

Crimea and IR Theory

The Russian occupation of Crimea is an interesting Rorschach test for foreign policy analysis, in an impressive number of ways.  I note these to make an analytical point, about the difficulty of applying political science concepts to ongoing events, rather than to make a political one.  In particular, the coverage seems to reinforce cleavages across the rational/emotional divide, the realist/liberal divide, levels of analysis, and, normatively, the national versus human security divide.  Pedagogically useful, but not a great advertisement for conceptual progress in the field.

To whit:

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